Coping with different types of innovation: What do metaphors reveal about how entrepreneurs cognitively represent innovation?

While the connection between entrepreneurship and innovation is acknowledged in literature, limited effort has been devoted to the understanding of how entrepreneurs linguistically represent their endeavour in generating and implementing different types of innovation. This paper addresses this void by bringing metaphor analysis into the field of innovation and entrepreneurship. We argue that the sensemaking and sensegiving role of figurative language is important in describing the complexity and ambiguity that characterize the innovation process. This paper provides insights about how episodes of innovation are linguistically elaborated and transmitted through ex post narration. Adopting semi-structured interviews, we found that entrepreneurs highly rely on metaphors to explain events of innovation. Moreover, each type of innovation (product, marketing, process, organizational, and strategic) is simplified differently through the use of metaphorical language in an attempt to differentiate innovations and to provide a rational structure to events. This research advances the literature providing a conceptualization of the different meanings entrepreneurs ascribe to innovation and discusses practical implications on how entrepreneurs’ mental models can be analysed and interpreted for improving the innovation process.