Highly innovative and extremely entrepreneurial individuals: what are these rare birds made of?

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to advance and clarify conceptualisations of innovative and entrepreneurial individuals through the analysis of their personality traits. Design/methodology/approach - This study has elements of both theory testing and theory creation, which led the authors to choose the case study as their research strategy. The “case” is an innovative and entrepreneurial individual, and the authors used extreme‐type empirical cases to develop ideal‐type concepts. The analysis is based on extensive longitudinal data. Findings - The study makes a contribution to theories of both entrepreneurship and innovation. It adds conceptual clarity in terms of providing evidence that the individuals concerned should not be considered as one characteristic group of actors. The authors propose that highly innovative and entrepreneurial individuals can be further divided to entrepreneurial innovators and innovative entrepreneurs. Practical implications - This study may enable the colleagues, business partners and competitors of entrepreneurial innovators and innovative entrepreneurs to better understand – and to some extent also to forecast – their behaviour. It also gives some hints regarding cooperation opportunities with both types of individual, and getting the most out of them. The results should also help policy makers and support agencies to recognise these people, who play an important role in the economy. Originality/value - To the authors’ knowledge this study is the first to analyse the traits of individuals who are both extremely innovative and highly entrepreneurial.