20173: Darkest Before the Dawn: Entrepreneurial Motivation and Sensemaking from Traumatic Experience (session 26080)

Moving theorization beyond the focus on positive personality traits and environmental factors, we explore how traumatic experiences can catalyse entrepreneurial motivation. We extend the conversation on adversity by showing that entrepreneurship is not only a necessity-based coping mechanism but a potentially transformative force. Leveraging in-depth qualitative data from military veterans turned entrepreneurs, this study identifies a three-phase process in which (1) initial trauma disrupts an individual's sense of reality, (2) a sensemaking process reconciles this disruption, and (3) entrepreneurial motivation emerges as an outcome of the reconciliation. Our findings reveal that the nature of trauma—whether self-related, other-related, or situational—shapes a sensemaking process leading to distinct entrepreneurial motivations. From those, we derive a framework encompassing the seeker entrepreneur, driven by self-related trauma; the helper entrepreneur, emerging from trauma related to others; and the innovator entrepreneur, resulting from situational trauma. We contribute to the study of entrepreneurship in three ways. First, we reveal new entrepreneurial motivations. Second, we clarify the mechanisms underlying their emergence. Third, we reposition entrepreneurship as not only an adaptive but highly proactive outcome.

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