Imagination in entrepreneurship studies

Early heterodox economic scholars regarded images and imagination as critical contributors to visualization and realization of entrepreneurial opportunities, decision making and the creation of new organizations. In this lineage of early work, perhaps the most well-known is Schumpeter (1934), who emphasized imagination as an activity through which entrepreneurs articulate new concepts and metaphors to grasp meaning and instigate change economies. In his view, imagination allows one to put oneself in the place of another person’s motives (or sentiments). Thus, the imagination is a vehicle of social change, as articulated in his notion of creative destruction. Schumpeter (1934, p. 86 emphasis added) writes, ‘a new and another kind of effort of will is therefore necessary in order to wrest, amidst the work and care of the daily round, scope and time for conceiving and working out the new combination and to bring oneself to look upon it as a real possibility and not merely as a day-dream’. In a similar vein, Shackle (1979) and Buchanan and Vanberg (1991) argue that uncertainty is at the root of all future expectations since ‘we can choose only what is still unactualized; we can choose amongst imaginations and figments. Imagined actions and policies can have only imagined consequences, and it follows that we can choose only an action whose consequences we cannot directly know, since we cannot be eyewitnesses of them because they are events in the future’ (Shackle, 1968). The principle of uncertainty provides entrepreneurs (and all humans) a cognitive opening to develop hitherto unexplored visions of the future, such that entrepreneurial choice and decision making is intertwined ‘amongst imagined experiences’ (Shackle, 1964, p. 12).

Another influential theorist, Kirzner (1973), is often thought of as standing in opposition to Schumpeterian and Shacklean views of imagination (Alvarez & Barney, 2007). And yet, while it is true that Kirzner initially had little reference to the imagination in his theory of arbitrage opportunities – i.e. they are confined to error recognition abilities (a single-period market decision) – he later professed that entrepreneurship in conditions of uncertainty involves multi-period market decisions that require ‘a more accurately envisaged future’ (Kirzner, 1982, p. 150). In fleshing out his well-known concept of “alertness” he claims ‘the human agent is at all times spontaneously on the lookout for hitherto unnoticed features of the environment (present or future), which might inspire new activity on his part’ such that entrepreneurial imagination ‘consists in seeing through the fog created by the uncertainty of the future’ (Kirzner, 1997, p. 51). Kirzner (1999) himself outlined how his theory is not necessarily inconsistent with a Schumpeterian perspective, arguing that both views stress that ‘it is [the entrepreneur’s] ability to shoulder uncertainty aside through recognizing opportunities in which imagination, judgement and creativity can successfully manifest themselves’ (Kirzner, 1998, p. 109). Finally, Lachmann (1986) makes the claim that markets are the outward manifestation of an endless stream of information continuously converted into new knowledge and new expectations. In his perspective, the forward-looking entrepreneurial imagination is the central mechanism from which new combinations of knowledge are derived.

Contemporary entrepreneurship research has kept the notion of imagination alive by reference to it as driving an individual ability to envision opportunities and reconceive of existing social order. Gartner (2007, p. 624) argues that the entrepreneurial imagination is the ‘generation of hypotheses about how the world might be, look and act’. Many contemporary scholars follow suit by arguing entrepreneurs use their imaginations to envision and recognize opportunities (Baron, 2006; Bjerke & Ramo, 2011; Cornelissen & Clarke, 2010; Davidsson, 2015; Hjorth, 2013; Klein, 2008; Sarasvathy, 2003; Witt, 2007). Foss and Foss (2008) note that while experiential knowledge is fundamental in the initial phase of venture formation, entrepreneurs may only be able to identify some elements of an opportunity, so they need to invoke imagination and search for and process information in order to more fully identify and evaluate the opportunity. Similarly, Cornelissen (2013, p. 704) contends that imagination seems to fuel the emotions and guide the inferential reasoning of entrepreneurs, allowing them to spot or create new opportunities by ‘blending different sets of ideas into a single guiding image, which, in turn, may trigger all sorts of inferential leaps’. Sarasvathy (2002) is a proponent of imagination such that entrepreneurs bring imagination into economic processes by sculpting visions and enacting the world they would want to live in. With this principle in mind, she emphasizes the urgent need to integrate imagination into economic theory (see Bronk (2009) for such an attempt).

Three critiques of the entrepreneurial imagination

In this section, I take a long overdue critical eye of such conceptualizations of the entrepreneurial imagination to develop a three-pronged critique – processual, relational and aesthetic.

The processual critique challenges contemporary conceptions of the entrepreneurial imagination as a cognitive ability associated mainly with the recognition of opportunities. In contemporary literature, imagination is commonly perceived to be operant in nascent ideation and early problem-solving stage of the entrepreneurship process (see Zhuo, 2008). While the imagination may be important for combining knowledge to come up with new venture ideas (Davidsson, 2015) or to envisage opportunities (Gartner, 2007), it is thought to give way to alternative cognitive processes (convergent, causal, effectual, inferential or analytical thinking) that are more necessary in the phases of opportunity evaluation and exploitation (Grégoire, Barr, & Shepherd, 2010). However, confining the imagination to a (bracketed) phase of the entrepreneurial process contradicts early theorists’ argumentation that all entrepreneurial decision-making – whether a decision to engage in entrepreneurial activities, attempt to acquire investment capital or target a particular customer group – involves imagining likely scenarios and sentiments of others under conditions of uncertainty. In line with processual perspective of entrepreneuring (Hjorth, Holt, & Steyaert, 2015; Verduyn, 2015), imagination is continuous and ever-present, with the resulting multiplicity of images (what one imagines) under constant reproduction and change throughout daily entrepreneurial life (Dimov, 2007). Entrepreneurial imagination is in constant use; thus, it is not restricted to ideation or opportunity recognition phases. For example, Popp and Holt (2012) build an argument for entrepreneurship as an unfolding imaginative process embedded in social contexts. The authors illustrate the emergence of entrepreneurship as a revelatory ‘poetic power’ that comes into being through the imaginative act of ‘making present’ – bringing forward that which is not yet present (see also Chiles, Elias, Vultee, & Zarankin, 2013; Dolmans, van Burg, Reymen, & Romme, 2014). Accordingly, a processual view of the entrepreneurial imagination challenges the common assumption that imagination can be contained to one (early) phase of the entrepreneurship process.

The second critique takes aim at the assumption that the entrepreneurial imagination is confined to an individual entrepreneur’s head. Being a fundamentally distinctive cognitive process, imagination is commonly referenced as an exercise of free will or unobstructed (cognitive) agency. However, a growing relational ontology of entrepreneurship has successfully criticized the presumption that the individual mind and the social world are ontologically and analytically two separate units that may interact without affecting their distinctiveness (Bradbury & Lichtenstein, 2000; Fletcher, 2006; Mutch, Delbridge, & Ventresca, 2006). As such, a relational critique uproots the presupposition that individual imaginative minds are the locus of creative ideas and opportunities. Instead, entrepreneurial imagination is a socially emergent and situated phenomenon in which the successive words and actions of others alters the nature and content of each participant’s imagining. A relational critique, therefore, claims that individualist conceptions of the entrepreneurial imagination understate the fact that the human mind is interdependent upon social relations, narratives and discourses. In other words, imagining is inseparable from the collaborative entrepreneurial process arising from shared activities, or practices (Schatzki, 2006), in which entrepreneurs imagine together with clients, suppliers, investors, etc. changes to objects and practices in a context of uncertainty. This resonates with Ramoglou and Tsang’s (2016) arguments that entrepreneurs use imagining within social contexts to formulate projections of possibly real, yet empirically ‘unactualised propensities’. Consequently, defining the entrepreneurial imagination as an individual cognitive process belies the notion that imagination both shapes as well as is shaped by others over the course of interaction.

The final critique pushes back against the tendency to view the entrepreneurial imagination as removed from or opposed to material realism. Much, if not all, of past and contemporary conceptualizations of the entrepreneurial imagination have strong undercurrents of subjectivism and idealism, whereupon which the social world exists as a matter of subjective perception and, as such, all changes to the social world originates from entrepreneurial visions. For example, the products of imagination, images, are thought to form the plan from which an enterprise emerges, thus it is an image, not the ontological phenomena they may reflect, that shapes entrepreneurial behaviour. This ‘subjectivist logic’, however, reinforces a tendency to view the entrepreneurial imagination as insensitive to or removed from socio-material realities. Alternatively, an aesthetic critique of the entrepreneurial imagination foremost draws attention to the absence of the senses – seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting and smelling – and their importance in grounding cognitive activities in actions and materiality. From an aesthetic tradition, cognitive and bodily ways of knowing and thinking about the world are not distinct phenomena but essentially intertwined (Strati, 2007), responsible for provoking the emotions and creative actions of entrepreneurs (Hjorth & Steyaert, 2008; Linstead & Hopfl, 2004). For example, the imagination of a restaurateur-entrepreneur is bound to the important dimensions of smell, sound, touch and sight of (imagined) cuisine, and the subconscious passion that can emerge from them. This is a notion that is underdeveloped in current literature leaving an untapped, rich opportunity to theorize how the interconnectedness of body and mind are shaping and shaped by entrepreneurs as they pursue endeavours.

In conclusion, processual, relational and aesthetic ontological orientations of the study of entrepreneurship largely undermine contemporary notions of the entrepreneurial imagination. Cornelissen (2013, p. 707) argues that the ‘singular focus on the static, condensed simultaneity of a single thought or symbol’ should give way to ‘study the plastic, dynamic nature of imagery and imagination and how emergent inferences, in turn, are realized within the institutional, technological, and economic constraints of a market or industry’. However, few researchers to date have heeded this call. There is a pressing need to renew connections to philosophy of imagination to develop these notions of entrepreneurial imagination in light of these criticisms. This oversight is surprising considering many entrepreneurship scholars proclaim the imagination as important while, on the other hand, the philosophy of imagination remains a rich and burgeoning area of study (see Kind, 2016). In the next section, I turn to and utilize the philosophy of imagination literature in order to address difficult questions related to the ontology of images and imagining.

Primary and secondary imaginations, images and creative expression

According to Warnock (1978), the imagination is best thought of as constituting two modes, primary and secondary, that operate together to form images. The primary imagination describes the fundamental ability to continuously and subconsciously blend and unify aspects of one’s sensory experience with memories to form instantaneous perceptions of the world (Engell, 1981). This mode of imagination essentially designates a provisional reconciliation of body and mind, wherein perceptions are the product of combinations of senses, emotions and memories. Importantly, sensory experiences and memories are wrought by social and material processes, received via the senses, which makes the primary imagination empirically and socially anchored. For example, real-time perception of certain objects (e.g. a computer) are laden with meanings (e.g. utility as a tool) that is possible through a combination of the senses (e.g. seeing, touching, and hearing the computer) and past experiences (e.g. memories of its use). Perceptions, therefore, are not solely based on past experience or knowledge, nor from immediate sensory experiences. Instead, it is the blending of senses and memories that forms perception. Accordingly, the active primary imagination subconsciously blends and constructs a more dynamic, open-ended and meaningful reality than that of sensory experience or memory alone (Warnock, 1978).

The secondary imagination is a continuation of the primary, but it is consciously and voluntarily activated. As a person activates their secondary imagination, they allow the functioning of the primary imagination to bring forth images of something not currently present. In other words, people use their secondary imagination to force the initial conditions of imagining, but let the rest of the imaginative exercise unfold without interference. For instance, to imagine a new entrée, a restaurateur-entrepreneur does not make herself imagine the exact details of the possible dish in question. Rather, having forced the initial conditions (i.e. she wishes to imagine a new dish), she allows the imagination to operate in primary mode (normally delegated only to perception) to create an image that can be accessed consciously. Left to itself, her primary imagination develops an image of an entrée not present but in a reality-oriented way. The secondary imagination can be, therefore, thought of as ‘perceiving in hypothetical mode’ (Murphy, 2004) relying on the same operation of the primary mode (blending memories and senses), only for perceiving that which is not present. Consequently, the secondary imagination is distinguished from fantasizing (or what Coleridge would call ‘fancy’) because it establishes a link between what is perceived to be ‘real’ or ‘true’ and that which is considered totally ‘fictive’ or ‘false’.

As mentioned, the ‘object’ of the interplay between primary and secondary imaginations are defined as images that themselves have unique ontological characteristics. First, images are characteristically fleeting in that they ‘dissipate’ when one stops activating secondary mode and/or being receptive to it (Casey, 1974). Second, images are also characteristically vague in that they do not communicate detail or exact likeness, like a photograph, rather they are suggestive of a certain essence or aesthetic ‘feel’ (Sartre, 1940), such as image-touch, image-taste, image-sound, image-sight and image-smell (Warnock, 1978). For instance, the restaurateur-entrepreneur evoking her secondary imagination senses in her mind’s eye the aesthetics of a possible new entrée (i.e. its taste, smell and visual appeal), rather than perceive of a picture of itself. Finally, to materialize images, people undertake creative acts – talking, gesturing, writing, dancing, drawing, painting and so on – in an effort to express and communicate their suggestive content. Crucially, creative expression provides the social link between images of one person to another, such that they inspire others to imagine and share their images, which has recursive implications for one another’s further imagining (Thompson, 2017). For example, the restaurateur-entrepreneur imagining a new entrée uses creative expressions (perhaps gestures, talk and sketches) to communicate to another person the content of the image (its imagined aesthetic taste, smell and look). This other person not only uses imagination in primary mode to understand these suggestive expressions, but can also use her own imagination in secondary mode (and subsequence creative expressions) to alter or edit this image. As a consequence, through interactive sequences of novel talk and actions, creative expressions make images publicly available, and thus shared phenomena.

Renewing the entrepreneurial imagination

As can be seen, the entrepreneurial imagination precludes assumptions of episodic, individual and purely cognitive elements. In this section, I reconsider imagination for entrepreneurship studies by way of an example between co-founders attempting to incorporate feedback from a client on a product design.

The entrepreneurial imagination begins, just like in all humans, with the primary imagination and one’s attempt to perceive the material and social world. Accordingly, interactions between the co-founders coincide with the use of primary imagination to subconsciously understand and consciously participate in various social practices. A meeting between the entrepreneurs, for example, has certain understandings of the purpose of a meeting (incorporate client feedback) and how and where meetings are carried out. From this common basis, the entrepreneurs each share a base perception of client feedback as well as their immediate social and material context (e.g. office space in specific locale). Now, suppose one of the entrepreneurs participating in the meeting wishes to deal with client feedback by rethinking the design of their prototype product. To do so, she may activate her secondary imagination, allowing the primary mode to form an image of some altered product design. This image does not exist as a detailed and completed image in her mind’s eye. Rather, it reflects her primary imagination’s blending of memories and senses in which images are more aesthetic than complete. Next, using creative expression, she attempts to communicate this image using gestures, talk, and other objects (like drawing on a whiteboard) with other co-founders in the room. These creative expressions have implications for the primary imagination of all participating entrepreneurs, as they sense visually and audibly the creative expression from the first entrepreneur. Hence, the primary imagination not only blends and fuses this new sensory input to form immediate perceptions, but allows for all participants of the meeting to also imagine, with some degree of difference, what the first entrepreneur is imagining.

As the meeting continues, each entrepreneur takes turns in actively imagining, communicating and refining an image of a new product design that was initially instigated by client feedback. At this point, the contributions of one entrepreneur in the production of an image are lost in the recursive flow of imagining and creative expression, such that a shared image emerges (manifest perhaps physically on a whiteboard, computer, paper, etc.). Hence, as the entrepreneurs jointly imagine and express images, they manipulate their bodies and materials to express and communicate images in ways that diverge from the routine enactment of social practices. This exposition of entrepreneurial imagination can be repeated in different and subsequent situations, for example, when the team of entrepreneurs redevelops a business model or presents to potential investors. In these subsequent scenarios, the entrepreneurs attempt to communicate to each other or to investors some future imagined scenarios, customer experiences or aesthetic qualities of their product design, using creative expressions to try and stimulate others to imagine in a similar way. This may entail further feedback from which the entrepreneurial team may renew their joint imagining.