Philosophical Reflexivity and Entrepreneurship Research

9Critiquing and renewing the entrepreneurial imagination

Neil A. Thompson

Introduction

Few concepts in the history of entrepreneurial thought rival that of the entrepreneurial imagination. Imagination has been referenced in entrepreneurship’s early development from heterodox economics literature and continues to be cited in the present (Cornelissen, 2013; Gartner, 2007; Sarasvathy, 2002; Thompson, 2017; Witt, 2007). It has long been evoked to explain the creation of products, creative action, sensemaking of futures and pasts and decision making (Schumpeter, 1934; Shackle, 1979). There is an indication, however, that imagination is beginning to fall from grace in the cognitive domain of entrepreneurship studies. As Grégoire, Corbett, and McMullen’s ...