Entrepreneurs and Innovation: Mobilizing Behavioral Competencies in Different Types of Innovation Processes

Entrepreneurs contribute to economic development in different ways. They represent an essential driver of innovation through the development of new products and processes, the exploitation of new markets, the introduction of new ways to organize firms and the implementation of new business models. While the connection between entrepreneurship and technological (product and process) and non-technological (organizational, marketing and strategy) innovation is widely acknowledged, there is an increasing need to investigate the factors that may better explain the differentials in terms of entrepreneurs’ innovation capacity at the individual level. This chapter addresses this void by presenting the stories of entrepreneurs who have introduced changes into their firm products, processes, organization, marketing and strategy, along with the related behavioral competencies that they mobilized to implement these types of innovation successfully.