Entrepreneurship and Identity

A growing body of research indicates that the entrepreneur’s identity is core to our understanding of entrepreneurial processes and outcomes. Identity has gained in popularity over the course of the last decade, as entrepreneurship scholars have realized that the richness of the concept, its embeddedness in social and symbolic universes, and its strong theoretical roots in psychology and sociology promote theory building. This chapter reviews key works in entrepreneurship that draw on the identity concept, thereby creating a much-needed map of current research—which also offers several promising ideas for future research.