Entrepreneurs as individuals are the main drivers of entrepreneurship. The personality characteristics of entrepreneurs mean they can make a difference in how their companies perform (Antončič et al., 2018). Despite the notion that variations in performance among companies can be explained by distinct differences among those individuals who lead companies, there is not much research in this area (Mollick, 2012), except for studies that consider individual differences while studying firm performance, like studies investigating managers (Lieberson and O'Connor, 1972; Bertrand and Schoar, 2003; Crossland and Hambrick, 2011; Mollick, 2012) or entrepreneurs (Gimeno et al., 1997; Johnson, 2007; Antončič et al., 2018).

Much research in the entrepreneurship field relies on the assumption that entrepreneurs have distinct personality characteristics that can be identified (Cooper and Dunkelberg, 1987). Personality traits constitutes a broad field attracting intensive research, where it is shown they are able to influence organizations. For example, Ruzzier et al. (2007) state that entrepreneurs draw on their human capital (knowledge, skills, values) to advance the interests of their organization.

Researchers have considered a range of determinants that affect entrepreneurial behavior, such as creativity (Shalley, 1991; Ward, 2004; DiLiello and Houghton, 2006) and the Big Five personality factors (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness to experience; Ciavarella et al., 2004; Zhao et al., 2010; Antončič et al., 2015). It makes sense to examine how entrepreneurial openness affects creativity on the level of the individual—the entrepreneur. Openness to experience is a typical element of entrepreneurship (Singh and DeNoble, 2003). Individuals possessing a high level of openness to experience are tolerant of ambiguity and able to create distant and unusual associations (McCrae, 2007), which may help in discovering entrepreneurial ideas. We study the construct of entrepreneurial openness, which is a specialized measure of openness in this area of study and thus suitable for consideration. The construct of entrepreneurial openness was developed by Slavec et al. (2017) and helps to understand the impact an entrepreneur’s personality has on the performance of their SMEs. In this article, we are interested in whether entrepreneurial openness influences creativity on the level of entrepreneurs such that they can successfully generate useful ideas and solutions and thereby influence the growth of their business. This study intends to fill a gap in the research on creativity and firm-level performance given that only a few studies have assessed this relationship (for example, Von Nordenflycht, 2007; Weinzimmer et al., 2011; Khedhaouria et al., 2015), but without taking account of the entrepreneur’s creativity, creative personality and entrepreneurial openness together in a model.

Edwards-Schachter et al. (2015) note that while creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship are recognized as key ingredients for fostering an entrepreneurial culture, their relationship to a skills-based approach remains insufficiently understood. Creativity is the premise of individual geniuses (Perry-Smith and Mannucci, 2015), while creativity and entrepreneurship are closely connected (Tiwari and Verma, 2020). Creativity may be understood as the creation of new ideas and innovations as well as the commercialization of new ideas (Basadur, 2004), which promotes an entrepreneurial culture (Edwards-Schachter et al., 2015), meaning it is reasonable to explore whether an individual entrepreneur’s creativity affects the growth of their company. In summary, this study concentrated on entrepreneurial openness and creativity on the entrepreneurial level relative to business growth.

Growth of the company may be regarded as a key concept in entrepreneurship because entrepreneurship can be growth and growth can be entrepreneurship (Davidsson et al., 2006). The growth of a company has two main connotations: (1) an increase in the amount (of its output, exports and/or sales) and (2) an increase in its size or an improvement in quality of its operations/products/services due a development process (Penrose, 1959, in Davidsson et al., 2010). Company growth typically indicates entrepreneurial success (Gupta et al., 2013) and is essential for economic development and the creation of wealth and employment, being best assessed in both absolute and relative terms (Davidsson and Wiklund, 2006). Growth of the company (including growth in employee numbers, sales and in market share) is often considered an important element of the company’s performance (Antončič and Hisrich, 2001). Sales growth may be an appropriate measure of growth in the company’s performance because it reflects stronger demand for the company’s products/services (Wiklund, 1999).

The right set of entrepreneurial characteristics can boost the results of entrepreneurial activities (for example, Zhao et al., 2010; Obschonka et al., 2013; Antončič et al., 2018). For instance, Ayala and Manzano (2014) note that three dimensions of entrepreneurial flexibility (courage, ingenuity, optimism) help predict entrepreneurial success, which might prove to be important for this study because flexibility is associated with creativity (Tasan-Kok, 2008). From the point of view of psychology, the constructs selected on the entrepreneurial level to be used in models of growth of the company are well connected and upgraded, one on top of the other.

One may conclude that entrepreneurs express quite considerable entrepreneurial openness that ensures their long-run success; entrepreneurs must be open to new things that can help them do business. Slavec et al. (2017) state that entrepreneurial openness consists of three categories: openness to learning, which directs entrepreneurs to learn about new ways of marketing and management approaches; openness to newness, which is crucial during the processes of innovation adoption; and openness to feedback, since entrepreneurs actively seek feedback to gain a competitive advantage, creatively solve problems, and reshape ideas to make them more relevant to market needs. Accordingly, we study how entrepreneurial openness, which we consider as an independent variable, affects the entrepreneur’s creativity.

Creativity is a very complex concept that can be defined, understood and applied in various ways. This means the term must be properly defined for this study’s purposes, relying on originality, usefulness, flexibility and mobility as the main criteria for creativity (Štemberger, 2013), whereas the focus is on creativity on the level of the individual entrepreneur. A creative-person approach is therefore used as it seeks to define general and specific abilities, motives and characteristics that describe an individual who makes creative products (Gough, 1979; Carroll, 1993; Eysenck, 1993; Batey and Furnham, 2006), while creativity will be treated as a personal characteristic.

Entrepreneurial creativity is considered in this study as both a dependent variable and partly as an independent one. Creativity is what distinguishes humans from other species, which probably explains this great interest in studying it on a general level (Ko and Butler, 2007). Creativity is directly related to entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs because when change is constant one must continually look for creative solutions to the current challenges. Entrepreneurs are creative in their work due to what is required or expected of them (Antonio et al., 2014). An increase in openness to experience can affect the relationship between quantity of ideas and creativity (Friis-Olivarius and Christensen, 2019). Shi et al. (2016) found positive relationships between openness to experience, intelligence and creative thinking in children in China. McCrae and Costa (1997) note that, on one hand, employees with a high level of openness to experience have access to different approaches and perspectives, and that entrepreneurial openness is a positive personality strength that includes characteristics like acquiring new skills, themes, and bodies of knowledge; discovering new and productive ways of doing things; and contemplating and studying things from all aspects (Slavec et al., 2017). We thus propose hypothesis 1, as follows:

The entrepreneur’s creativity may have another antecedent—a creative personality. A creative personality (Kaufman and Baer, 2004) entails general creativity on the level of the individual, whereas the creativity on the level of an entrepreneur (Puhakka, 2005) is more specific to the domain of entrepreneurship. Kaufman et al. (2009) developed the hierarchical creativity construct and found that its most reflective domains were performance and artistic/visual, with its much less reflective domains being math/science and problem-solving. Key items were identified (Kaufman et al., 2009) for each creativity domain: the entrepreneur domain (the most reflective items: advertising and business); the performance domain (acting and film); the math/science domain (life sciences and chemistry); the artistic/visual domain (painting and crafts); the problem-solving domain (mechanical and logic); the interpersonal domain (personal problems and interacting with one’s family); and the artistic/verbal one (writing fiction and writing nonfiction). Kaufman et al. (2009) state the question of whether creativity is general (a creative individual) or domain-specific (for example, a creative poet, a creative mathematician, a creative architect) is sometimes left unanswered or ignored. In this study, we include both aspects and hypothesize that people with a higher level of general creativity are more likely to develop a specific form of creativity in entrepreneurship:

According to one definition, creativity is the imaginative recombination of elements from the past into new configurations needed in the present (Torrance, 1988). Kampylis et al. (2009) define creativity as an activity (both mental and physical) that occurs in a particular time, spatial, social and cultural context and leads to original tangible/intangible outcomes that are useful, ethical and desirable, if not for others then at least for the creator. This knowledge constitutes a scientific challenge on the level of entrepreneurship and thus in this study we explore how the creativity of entrepreneurs affects the growth of their companies. Trstenjak (1981) argued that creativity is built on two starting points in the relationship between the individual and society: the individual in cooperation with society, and vice versa when society encourages the individual.

Innovation (or innovativeness) is a defining ingredient of entrepreneurship (for example, Schumpeter, 1934, 1942) and is crucial for firm performance (for example, Antončič et al., 2007; Antončič and Prodan, 2008). Innovativeness is not included in this study, yet it must be distinguished from creativity. For the purposes of separating the constructs of creativity and innovation on the entrepreneurial level, we note the rationale given by Gurteen (1998) who states that a more useful definition of creativity is the process of generating ideas, while innovation should be seen as a treatment, improvement and, more critically, the implementation of these ideas. Gurteen (1998) listed several differences: creativity refers to divergent thinking, innovation refers to convergent thinking; creativity refers to generating ideas, innovation puts ideas into action. Being creative means seeing the same things as everyone else, but thinking about something other than what everyone else does (Krueger and Brazeal, 1994).

The relationship between digital creativity and individual academic performance of adolescents can be positive and mediated by parenting styles (Pérez-Fuentes et al., 2019). Peljko et al. (2017) examined the relationship between the entrepreneur’s creative abilities and firm growth and obtained mixed results (a positive relationship in a combined sample from Slovenia and the United States of America, yet no relationship in Serbia). Wdowiak et al. (2012) suggest that entrepreneurial behavior can be improved by developing values of the individual like creativity, striving for a challenging life, or autonomy, through the early life of individuals in education and in the family, based on the finding of positive relationships between values held by the individual and entrepreneurial skills in Austria, Poland and Slovenia. Entrepreneurs constantly deal with questions/challenges for which they have no answer. Here, the essence of creativity lies in inventing new and better ways to do things and address certain risks since new ideas can ensure delivery of the planned positive results (Zhou and George, 2001). Creativity is important for organizations’ competitiveness and success (Çekmecelioğlu and Özbağ, 2016) as well as entrepreneurial success (Tiwari and Verma, 2020). We thus posit the following hypothesis:

The structural model discussed and verified in this research and reflected in hypotheses H1, H2 and H3 presented in the section above is shown in Figure 1.

A positive relationship between the entrepreneur’s entrepreneurial openness and their creativity was found in all three countries under study. Based on their openness (e.g., to learn new marketing approaches, look for ideas for new products or services, carefully examine all changes proposed by others, think outside of the box, evaluate all options), individuals will tend to develop entrepreneurial creativity (e.g., to become good at modifying the normal ways of doing things, new solutions come to mind even if not especially needed, inventing exceptional and surprising solutions for problems, and having plenty of ideas). A positive relationship between the entrepreneur’s creative personality and their creativity was established. The creative personality (e.g., doing things that others find strange, enjoying wild flights of fantasy, loving to daydream) can influence entrepreneurial creativity. We may conclude that entrepreneurial openness and creative personality may be important antecedents of the entrepreneur’s creativity. A positive relationship between the creativity of the entrepreneur and firm growth was found in two of the three countries (Slovenia and Serbia, but not in Latvia). The entrepreneur’s creativity can be an influential driver of their firm’s growth (growth in the number of employees, sales growth, growth in market share) in some countries (in Slovenia and Serbia in our study) and not in others (Latvia in our study). This might reflect differences in culture among the three countries in this study because national culture and its individual elements can influence entrepreneurial growth intentions (Leković and Berber, 2019).

The contribution to science made by this study is the conceptually developed and empirically tested model of entrepreneurial openness, creativity, and growth. This study makes a theoretical contribution by showing that the entrepreneur’s openness and possession of a creative personality may be important for the entrepreneur’s creativity and that this very creativity may be important for the growth of their firm. These results were found on samples of entrepreneurs from three European countries (Slovenia, Serbia, Latvia), except for the entrepreneurial creativity–growth relationship in Latvia. The empirical results based on the model of entrepreneurial openness, creativity, and firm growth contribute to the normative research on firm growth (for instance, research on creativity and firm performance: Von Nordenflycht, 2007; Weinzimmer et al., 2011; Khedhaouria et al., 2015) by revealing the importance of entrepreneurial openness and a creative personality for predicting the entrepreneur’s creativity, and the importance of the entrepreneur’s creativity for their firm’s growth.

The findings from this study extend research on entrepreneurial personality (e.g., Gimeno et al., 1997; Johnson, 2007; Antončič et al., 2018) and research on creativity and success (e.g., Çekmecelioğlu and Özbağ, 2016; Peljko et al., 2017; Tiwari and Verma, 2020) by adding constructs of entrepreneurial openness and creative personality in the model. The study confirms previous findings on the relationship between entrepreneurial openness and creativity (e.g., Shi et al., 2016; Friis-Olivarius and Christensen, 2019). The study clarifies the structure of constructs of entrepreneurial openness (Slavec et al., 2017), creative personality (Kaufman and Baer, 2004) and entrepreneur’s creativity (Puhakka, 2005) by testing the constructs on data from three countries.

This study contributes to comparative international entrepreneurship research because it involves a multi-country study of entrepreneurial activity that includes the four levels classified by Terjesen et al. (2016): individual, firm, industry and country. These levels were embodied in the following:

The study also makes an empirical contribution by refining or retesting measures of entrepreneurial openness (Slavec et al., 2017), the entrepreneur’s creativity (Puhakka, 2005), and a creative personality (Kaufman and Baer, 2004) in three countries and revealing the key internationally comparable (etic) items:

This study holds implications for theory, research and practice. Theory can better focus on entrepreneurial openness and creativity on the level of the entrepreneur in the prediction of firm growth. On one hand, company growth can depend on creative entrepreneurs who can spot opportunities for growth. Creativity may be connected to entrepreneurship because creativity stimulates the recognizing of new opportunities (for example, Shane, 2003; Gielnik et al., 2012). On the other hand, growth might not be about creativity but more about imitating or copying others (for example, Schmitz, 1989; Segerstrom, 1991; Szulanski and Jensen, 2008). With this study we have added some evidence to help resolve this controversy (creativity vs. copying) by focusing on creativity and showing that growth of the company can depend on creative entrepreneurs in Slovenia and Serbia and on copying or other factors in Latvia.

Researchers can use the three cross-nationally comparable measures (openness of the entrepreneur, creative personality, and creativity of the entrepreneur) in their research. Practitioners and policymakers must take into account that the personality of the entrepreneur as concerns their openness and creativity might be important for the growth of their company (growth in employee numbers, sales, and market share), meaning that education and training for companies and students must focus more strongly on developing the openness and creativity of individuals in order to improve business results (growth). Education and training should concentrate on developing entrepreneurial openness (in terms of learning new marketing approaches, searching for ideas for new products/services, searching for information on how to introduce changes, and thinking outside of the box), entrepreneurial creativity (in terms of encouraging numerous ideas, modifying the normal ways of doing things, searching for new solutions even if they are not needed, and coming up with exceptional and surprising solutions to problems), and a creative personality (in terms of encouraging wild fantasizing, daydreaming, and doing things that others find strange).

This study is not without its limitations. The main limitations are: (1) the model which is developed is a partial model in that only some psychological constructs of the entrepreneur were considered; for example, the creativity of the entrepreneur could have other antecedents: self-efficacy, internal locus of control, achievement, and materialism (Nisula and Olander, 2020), whereas growth of the company could have other antecedents: firm strategy factors (for example, customer orientation, competitor orientation, relationship coordination) and industry characteristics (for example, industry growth; Leischnig et al., 2016). (2) The use of closed-ended questions and perceptual measures in the questionnaire. (3) The possible indications (NFI = 1; RMSEA = 0.000) of saturations of some of the structural models. (4) Data were collected in the same time period and thus inferences about causality in the hypotheses were developed based on the literature and not directly verified. (5) Data from SMEs’ entrepreneurs were collected in three European countries and thus the results might not be fully relevant to all countries around the world.

For future research, we suggest: (1) the relationships between the constructs entrepreneurial openness, creative personality and creativity of the entrepreneur on the individual level and the growth construct (firm level) could be further examined in other countries, perhaps by adding some other variables and/or constructs. (2) The cross-country comparable measures employed in this study could be upgraded in future research. (3) Qualitative research techniques like in-depth interviews might improve knowledge about the content and functioning of the conversions of personal-level activities and aspirations (related to openness and creativity) to firm-level business results (growth).

This study contributes to knowledge about entrepreneurship and small business management in terms of normative research on firm growth by empirically examining the relationships between the entrepreneurial openness, creative personality, and creativity of the entrepreneur and growth of their company. Further, the study developed refined cross-nationally comparable measures of entrepreneurial openness, creativity of the entrepreneur, and creative personality. The entrepreneur’ openness and creative personality may be essential for their creativity. The entrepreneur’s creativity may be vital for the growth of their company in some countries.

The datasets presented in this article will be made available by the authors upon request. Requests to access the datasets should be directed to ziga.peljko@kd-group.si; jasna.auer@fm-kp.si.

Ethical review and approval was not required for the study on human participants in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. Written informed consent for participation was not required for this study in accordance with the national legislation and the institutional requirements.

ŽP and JA developed the research project, carried out the data collection, and revised the manuscript. ŽP carried out the data analysis and wrote the first draft. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

ŽP was employed by KD Group d.d.

The remaining author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.