Emotional Intelligence: The secret of successful entrepreneurship?

An emerging, and very promising, stream of research on entrepreneurs pertains to the role of affect -- feelings and emotions -- in enhancing the potential success of entrepreneurial ventures. For example, research indicates that positive emotions may enhance entrepreneurial creativity, including opportunity recognition (Baron, 2008). Additionally, entrepreneurs who display passion -- positive, intense feelings -- about their ventures tend to be more successful than those who do not display passion (Baum & Locke, 2004). Positive emotions also influence an entrepreneur\u27s ability to turn past experiences into present solutions through heuristic processing (Baron, 2008), and to deal effectively with the persistent stress (Carver & Scheier, 2001) that often plagues entrepreneurs