Imagination in entrepreneurship : an inspiration from Heidegger

Talat, U; Chang, K

Abstract

Entrepreneur's imagination has crucial implication on business success and management. Despite its espoused importance, imagination is still undervalued and deserves more academic attention. The current article aims to provide a novel perspective on imagination informed by Heidegger (1889-1976; widely acknowledged to be one of the most original philosophers of the 20th century). Specifically, the article has clarified the definition of imagination in entrepreneurship and risen constructs align with the proposed conception. Under the microscope of Heidegger’s theory, entrepreneur’s imagination co-operates ventures successfully by incorporating notions of webs of significance, authenticity, spontaneity, heroes and moods, which guide opportunity identification and exploration in markets. The article has offered new insights to the knowledge of entrepreneur's imagination. From a pragmatic viewpoint, inferential leaps are possible because entrepreneurs practice against a background of webs of significance they own - which they relationally, linguistically and pragmatically - share across institutional frames. Implications of the findings on management are discussed.
Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Heidegger; Imagination; Instability; Unpredictability; Spontaneity.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 21, 2019
• Online Publication Date: May 31, 2019
• Publication Date: May 31, 2019
• Deposit Date: Feb 22, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 4, 2019
• Journal: Journal of Psychological Research
• Electronic ISSN: 2630-5143
• Volume: 1
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 15-23
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.30564/jpr.v1i01.417
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.30564/jpr.v1i01.417
• Related Public URLs: https://ojs.bilpublishing.com/index.php/jpr/index