From Individual Consumption to Venture Development: the Role of Domain Passion in the Videogame Industry

This paper explores how individual domain passion influences venture development. Albeit passion is one of the most debated concepts in psychology, entrepreneurship and marketing literatures, a framework describing how passion for consumption shapes the entrepreneurial process is still lacking. Based on an inductive qualitative approach, the paper addresses these issues via analysing an Italian and a Japanese videogame companies. The paper provides two important contributions to existing research. First, it shows that obsessive and harmonious passion influence venture growth strategies through what we call a ‘passion-fulfilling’ and a ‘passion-orchestrating’ venture development models. Second, it sheds light on the role of contextual factors in shaping passion. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.