Cultural Catalysts: Unraveling the Nexus Between Culture, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship in Contemporary Societies

Abstract

Abstract: Innovation and entrepreneurial spirit are the bedrock of today’s economy. There has been a lot of study on the monetary components of innovation and entrepreneurship, but much less on the cultural factors that influence them. The existing body of research on the relationship between culture and innovation and entrepreneurship largely views culture as a limiting element that impedes and delays the generation of new ideas. This is particularly valid in the case of creative and enterprising economic activities. We hope to raise awareness of the important role that culture plays in creative and entrepreneurial pursuits through this special issue, a phenomenon we refer to as “cultural entrepreneurship.” Moreover, we contend that to elucidate the symbolic meaning systems used by entrepreneurs as instruments in their quest for innovation, scholars should embrace a broader understanding of culture. We explore how these modern cultural perspectives are used by the essays in this special issue to further the creation of an interesting academic agenda. These papers use a variety of empirical situations and methodologies to provide new and thought-provoking discoveries about cultural entrepreneurship. We propose research issues and possible future directions based on these contributions.

Received: 21 September 2024| Revised: 28 July 2025| Accepted: 22 August 2025

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to this work.

Data Availability Statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.

Author Contribution Statement

Shahid Hussain: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Formal analysis, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing– review & editing, Supervision, Project administration. Saad ur Rehman: Validation, Investigation, Resources, Visualization.