Entrepreneurs as individuals are the main drivers of entrepreneurship and possess distinct personality characteristics. The study focused on entrepreneurial openness and creativity on the ...entrepreneurial level relative to business growth. Hypotheses were developed and empirically tested in structural equation models using survey data obtained from SMEs’ entrepreneurs in three countries. This study adds to what is known about entrepreneurship and small business management in terms of normative research on firm growth by empirically examining the relationships between the entrepreneurial openness, creative personality, and creativity of the entrepreneur and growth of the company. Moreover, the study develops refined internationally comparable measures of entrepreneurial openness, entrepreneur creativity, and a creative personality. An entrepreneur’s openness and creative personality may be essential for their creativity. The entrepreneur’s creativity may be a vital element of company growth in some countries.
This study introduces entrepreneurial openness as a construct that helps understanding the impact of entrepreneur's personality on small firm's performance. We draw from the entrepreneurship and ...positive psychology literature to conceptualize entrepreneurial openness as an individual-level positive personal cognitive strength that has three subdimensions: engaging in learning, searching for novelty, and seeking feedback. We validated the construct's structure in three consecutive studies: Study 1 provided initial empirical evidence in support of the proposed scale with a pilot sample of Slovenian business owners; Study 2 assessed the reliability and validity of the scale with a cross-cultural study in Canada, Slovenia, and USA; and Study 3 tested the scale for its impact on business performance and job satisfaction. Findings from our empirical studies demonstrate the utility of entrepreneurial openness in explaining firm's performance by showing strong reliability, appropriate dimensionality, convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity.
