Dueling Banjos: Harmony and Discord between ADHD and Entrepreneurship

The past half century has witnessed a steady and diverse flow of scholarly research to understand the role individual differences play in determining entrepreneurial pursuits and new venture outcomes. Recently, the search for micro-level drivers has led scholars to investigate the role of dispositions and conditions that have been traditionally pathologized, such as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The potential influence of ADHD looms large in the field of entrepreneurship as a spate of recent studies suggests a positive relationship with creativity, entrepreneurial orientation, and new venture initiation. While offering significant progress in destigmatizing aberrant conditions, extant scholarship has left unanswered questions regarding ADHD’s influence on formation, development, and outcomes of new ventures. Accepting that ADHD should be neither stigmatized nor romanticized in the context of entrepreneurship, we develop a more holistic framework for ADHD, extending across the complete life cycle of business venturing.

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