The Role of the Human Voice in Entrepreneurship – A Conceptualization and Research Agenda

Whether in investor pitches, business plan competitions, funding negotiations, team formations, or selling to customers – entrepreneurship stakeholders ubiquitously make use of their voice. Without the voice at their center, many of these entrepreneurial situations would be inconceivable. Research in diverse academic disciplines – ranging from psychology, linguistics, and communications to evolutionary biology – has revealed that the human voice itself and independently from the literal content elicits strong effects on the perceptions of listeners. Counterintuitively, however, and in sharp contrast to its potential relevance, the role of the human voice has thus far been neglected in entrepreneurship research. In the present paper, we introduce a conceptual model of the role of the voice in entrepreneurship. The discussion of our model informs a research agenda for future entrepreneurship studies integrating the voice as an important variable. We conclude with implications for practice and research in the field of entrepreneurship.