Feeding the hype cycle: Entrepreneurial swagger, passion, and inflated expectations

Kevin Heupel, Jorge Arteaga Fonseca, Matthew Rutherford and Bryan Edwards

Journal of Business Venturing, 2024, vol. 39, issue 6

Abstract: Hype occurs when expectations exceed reality. For founders promoting innovative technologies, hype often attracts the resources necessary to grow a new venture. Hype is gaining prominence in entrepreneurship literature, and it is understood that many entrepreneurs jumpstart their ventures by promoting optimistic, future projections to entice stakeholders. Unfortunately, little is known about how skilled cultural founders generate hype to attract stakeholders. In our study, we examine how founders function as “skilled cultural operatives” to positively manipulate the emergence of hype. We conduct an experiment on 148 members of the media, and we find support for our theorizing in that founders who display their entrepreneurial abilities (swagger) combined with an authentic emotional commitment to the venture (passion), it increases media expectations (hype).

Keywords: Entrepreneurial swagger; Entrepreneurial passion; Cultural entrepreneurship; Hype; Legitimacy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0883902624000545
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbvent:v:39:y:2024:i:6:s0883902624000545

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2024.106432

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Venturing is currently edited by S. Venkataraman

More articles in Journal of Business Venturing from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().