Positive Stress And Reflective Practice Enhancing Innovativeness Among Entrepreneurs

The heavy stress load and the need for innovativeness seem to be unavoidable aspects of entrepreneurship. Yet, the positive side of stress, often referred to as 'eustress', and its potential in boosting innovativeness have remained understudied areas. As a tool for analysing and developing thoughts and actions, reflective practice has the potential to play an important role both in interpretations essential to positive stress experiences and in innovations described as learning processes. Our aim is to contribute to entrepreneurship and innovativeness research by combining the research streams of eustress and reflective practice. First, we shed light on how entrepreneurs experience the role of positive stress and reflective practice in their work. Then, we provide a description of the reflective tools that entrepreneurs utilize in promoting eustress and innovativeness. The research process is designed to support reflective dialogue among the participants, which included 21 Finnish entrepreneurs from different fields. The results are mainly based on qualitative interviews. Nine of the interviewed entrepreneurs recorded also a positive stress diary, including a three-day physiological measurement analysing their heartbeat variability. The results were interpreted together with these entrepreneurs in additional interviews, which enrich the original data. Our findings suggest that positive stress and reflective practice are intertwined in the experiences of entrepreneurs. However, the capabilities for reflection vary, and the theory-driven division of reflective practice into individual, social and contextual dimensions is useful for understanding differences between entrepreneurs. The results illustrate how reflective practice forms a crucial toolbox for promoting positive stress. This toolbox consists of the following six tools: studying oneself, changing one's point of view, putting things into perspective, harnessing a feeling of trust, regulating the resources and engaging in dialogue. In sum, this research works as a starting point in exploring the connections of eustress and reflective practice to the innovativeness of entrepreneurs.