Exploring the Heart: Entrepreneurial Emotion Is a Hot Topic Melissa S. Cardon Maw-Der Foo Dean Shepherd Johan Wiklund Entrepreneurial emotion refers to the affect, emotions, moods, and/or feelings—of individu- als or a collective—that are antecedent to, concurrent with, and/or a consequence of, the entrepreneurial process, meaning the recognition/creation, evaluation, reformulation, and/or the exploitation of a possible opportunity. In this paper, we explore this working definition of entrepreneurial emotion, what it means, and some important advances the field has made in this area of research. We also highlight fundamental avenues for future research that are sorely in need of study. Finally, we introduce the seven papers in this special issue on the Heart of Entrepreneurship and how they move the conversation on entrepreneurial emotion forward. Introduction Scholars have long recognized the importance of emotions at work (see Hochschild, 1983), and for our purposes even more importantly that entrepreneurship is an emotional journey (Baron, 2008). What is it about the entrepreneurial context that makes being an entrepreneur such as emotional endeavor? Perhaps it is the extreme experience that entrepreneurship involves (Schindehutte, Morris, & Allen, 2006). Perhaps it is the close bond often typified in entrepreneurship between entrepreneur and organization (Cardon, Zietsma, Saparito, Matherne, & Davis, 2005). Or perhaps the extreme levels of uncer- tainty and personal risk involved contribute to the entrepreneurial journey being an emotional one (Baron). Regardless of the reason, entrepreneurship is clearly an emotional process. Because entrepreneurship provides an extreme emotional context within which to study affect, we have a unique opportunity to not only import theories from psychology and other disciplines but also to develop and extend those theories and contribute back to those core disciplines. We have made many advances toward such a goal. Prominent examples include Dean Shepherd and colleagues’ work on understanding workplace grief Please send correspondence to: Melissa S. Cardon, tel.: 914-773-3618; e-mail: mcardon@pace.edu, to Maw-Der Foo at foom@colorado.edu, Dean Shepherd at shepherd@indiana.edu, and to Johan Wiklund at jwiklund@syr.edu. P T E & 1042-2587 © 2012 Baylor University 1 January, 2012 DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6520.2011.00501.x