The quest for the entrepreneurial culture: psychological Big Data in entrepreneurship research

Abstract

Highlights • The paper gives an overview over entrepreneurship research. • The paper highlights the role of culture as a driver of entrepreneurial activity. • It summarises new research on entrepreneurial culture. • This research is based on psychological Big Data. • This Big Data has delivered important new insights on entrepreneurial culture. Entrepreneurship is an important topic of our time due to its effect on economic development and social change. However, economic research struggled to explain entrepreneurial activities of regions with standard economic models, assuming perfect rationality of individuals and populations. Economic research has thus developed a strong interest in understanding the more ‘hidden’ informal institutions such as cultural factors. Here, a new generation of psychological research based on Big Data delivers a series of interesting results. Drawing from a personality-based approach to assess and to study the effects and origins of an entrepreneurial culture, this new research illustrates the great potential of psychological Big Data for economic, sociological, geographical, and psychological approaches to entrepreneurship. However, future research should employ new, complex analytic methods that utilise the full potential of Big Data.