Research Methods Centre- Brown Bag Seminar: “Hype: Marker and Maker of Entrepreneurial Culture”

Entrepreneurship research has conceptualized hype as a future-oriented expectation. However, it has not examined what the valorization of hype reveals about the entrepreneurship culture that treats it as a legitimate way to communicate prospects. We present a conceptual history of hype over the last century to better understand its evolving cultural meanings. We find that the modern concept of hype is not just about future expectations but operates as a relational construct to mark difference. In the US, it emerged to describe criminal subcultures through a social process of stigmatization; then migrated into countercultural movements to distinguish their lifestyle and values from American mass culture; and eventually became coopted by entrepreneurship culture, which used it to mark its difference from corporate values. We argue that this historical analysis clarifies how hype legitimizes not just practices of expectation setting but also of cultural distinction. We use these insights to discuss the social practices and moral values that characterize contemporary entrepreneurship and highlight the practical and scholarly value of more deeply understanding entrepreneurship as a distinct culture.