The Temporality of Entrepreneurship: How Entrepreneurs Blend Memories and Projections in the Ongoing Present of New Venture Creations

In this chapter, I explore the different temporal layers involved in entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is the process of bringing something into being that did not exist before – either a new venture, product or service – and this process can only be understood if we consider how entrepreneurship unfolds in time. However, there is no ‘one’ time of entrepreneurship. Instead, time have many layers that are expressed in the way that entrepreneurship unfolds. To explore these layers, I draw on insights from the philosophy of time, and show how these insights are valuable for thinking about entrepreneurship. I focus on two ways that time relates to entrepreneurship. The first is the way that entrepreneurship is a journey or process. The second is the way that entrepreneurship involves actions that take place in time. Although these two aspects of entrepreneurship are interrelated, they must nevertheless be understood against the backdrop of different categories of time.