The entrepreneur’s identity and perception of society at the heart of innovation

In recent years, founder identity has become a topic of interest for entrepreneurship researchers seeking to understand the factors that lead to a diversity of forms, goals and strategies among start-ups. The starting point for this study was the question – how does culture influence entrepreneurial identity? What emerges from this qualitative study is the question of identity-societal alignment. This determines whether the entrepreneur will aim for a purely economic logic, yet reproduce existing social structures, or whether he will aim to challenge and change social structures and norms with his product or his way of running his business.