Drawing on Ryff’s model of eudaimonic well-being and offering new insight into its consequences for entrepreneurs, we posit that eudaimonic well-being, by enhancing self-regulation for long-term self-actualization, can support entrepreneurs’ creativity. Moreover, eudaimonic well-being may also serve as a critical protective capability during adversity, mitigating losses in creativity when entrepreneurs need it most to adapt and navigate crises. We test our proposition through two studies examining how eudaimonic well-being impacts changes in entrepreneurs’ creativity, contingent on objective measures of adversity (degree of lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic) and across two different timescales (several months and two weeks). Across both studies and time frames, higher (pre-crisis) eudaimonic well-being drove subsequent positive changes in entrepreneurs’ creativity and this effect was amplified under conditions of heightened objective adversity. The findings underscore eudaimonic well-being's role as a critical protective capability in enhancing creativity especially in times of adversity and crises. We extend the scarce research on the consequences of entrepreneurs’ well-being, add to the ‘business-case for well-being’ by demonstrating links with creativity, and offer new insight to research on adversity and entrepreneurship by studying the consequences of (pre-crisis) eudaimonic well-being for entrepreneurs’ in-crisis creativity.
