Craft Production and Entrepreneurial Form

Abstract

Work on craft production has examined a wide range of topics from x, y to z. So far, however, the intersection of craft production and entrepreneurship has been overlooked, such that we know little about the people who found companies around craft or their motivations. Entrepreneurship scholars have also neglected craft production as a discrete entrepreneurial form, which tend to be of small scale. We fill both of these gaps in the literature simultaneously by investigating the phenomenon on craft entrepreneurship in the context of bean-to-bar chocolate in the U.S. Through qualitative analysis, we find that founders of craft firms engage in a form of entrepreneurship centering on a specific meaning of both their product and the production process and incorporating non-market goals. In turn, this orientation generates limits to organizational scale, resulting in a specific organizational form that defines craft entrepreneurship.