On the Nature of Institutional Entrepreneurs: Insights From the Life of Rachel Carson

Institutional entrepreneurship is important for creating and transforming institutions, yet little is known about the individuals who conceive, initiate, and champion institutional projects. Extant research emphasizes factors contributing to institutional entrepreneurs’ success at championing change rather than their conception and initiation of change. A large stream of entrepreneurship research, however, focuses squarely on entrepreneurs as individuals and the psychological forces driving them. In this theory-building article, we adopt a psychodynamic approach to explore institutional entrepreneurs as individuals. Drawing upon an in-depth biographical case study of one of the most celebrated institutional entrepreneurs of the 20th century, Rachel Carson, our findings illustrate that the projects of institutional entrepreneurs can be understood as expressions of vision and passion rooted deeply in life issues and of three aspects of character forged in formative experience: independence and comfort with marginality, desire to perform, and a sense of agency and duty.