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On Entrepreneurial Stories: Tolkien’s Theory of Fantasy and the Bridge between Imagination and Innovation

Innovations are the product of entrepreneurs’ imaginations. To turn imaginations into realized innovations, entrepreneurs must attract the resources necessary to create the innovations they envision. Resource acquisition involves crafting and communicating compelling narratives that persuade stakeholders to provide resources. However, there is not a clearly articulated theory linking entrepreneurial imagination, narratives, and the production of innovations. To construct such a theory, this paper extends work on narratives in literary theory and, specifically, Tolkien’s theory of narrative fantasy. It is proposed that entrepreneurs’ narratives about innovations are, initially, “fantasies” because they describe possible worlds in which the imagined innovations exist. As fantasies, the characteristics of persuasive fantasy narratives, such as the degree to which narratives achieve an inner consistency of reality and suspend audiences’ disbelief, influence entrepreneurs’ ability to convince stakeholders about the viability of imagined innovations. The proposed theory contributes to entrepreneurship scholarship by developing a process model that articulates how entrepreneurs’ imaginations manifest in their narratives, which, in turn, influence the realization of innovations. The theory generates concrete implications for entrepreneurs and suggests that as the novelty of an imagined innovation increases, it becomes more critical for entrepreneurs to construct compelling narratives to describe the innovation. Thus, entrepreneurs and scholars should be attentive to the role narratives play in moving beyond the idea phase of entrepreneurship and bridging imagination and innovation.