Passion for what? Expanding the domains of entrepreneurial passion

Entrepreneurial passion helps coordinate cognition and behavior of entrepreneurs, providing the fire that fuels innovation, persistence, and ultimate success. However, our knowledge of the sources of passion is limited and focuses primarily on activities predetermined by scholars, rather than those generated by entrepreneurs themselves. Using a phenomenological approach, we conduct an inductive qualitative study of 80 entrepreneurs and analyze their oral histories to explore the sources of entrepreneurial passion as described by entrepreneurs. Our discovery process suggests six major sources of entrepreneurial passion: passion for growth, passion for people, passion for the product or service, passion for inventing, passion for competition, and passion for a social cause. This extends prior research that focuses on passion toward a more limited range of activities.