 The myth of entrepreneurship as a tool: Reorienting business venturing as a goal in itself in a post-growth societyLeonardo Mazzoni, Wim Naudé and Niccolò Innocenti Journal of Business Venturing Insights, 2025, vol. 23, issue C Abstract: An enduring myth is of entrepreneurship as the means to the goal of economic growth. With a growing realization that perpetual economic growth and firm growth are not sustainable and violate the planet's biophysical limits, entrepreneurship should focus on contributing to a post-growth society. However, in this paper, we argue that the problems with this are twofold: one, the notions of a post-growth society are not at present compatible with entrepreneurship, and two, such an orientation continues to consider entrepreneurship as a means to a goal - in other words as a tool to fix the problems caused by excessive economic growth. In this light, we call for a de-emphasis on entrepreneurship as a means to economic growth and for more research and policies towards business venturing as a goal. Such a reorientation may also provide a basis for conceptualizing entrepreneurship in a post-growth society. Keywords: High-growth entrepreneurship; Innovative startups; Unproductive entrepreneurship; Economic growth; Post-growth; Ossified economy (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jobuve:v:23:y:2025:i:c:s2352673424000647 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbvi.2024.e00512 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Business Venturing Insights is currently edited by Dimo Dimov More articles in Journal of Business Venturing Insights from Elsevier |
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