© 2006 The Authors Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing 258 CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION MANAGEMENT Volume 15 Number 3 2006 doi:10.1111/j.1467-8691.2006.00395.x Entrepreneurs’ Intentions and Partnership Towards Innovation: Evidence from the Japanese Film Industry Jin-ichiro Yamada and Masaru Yamashita Many scholars have researched in the field of entrepreneurship and innovation; nevertheless, little attention has been given to a causal relationship between these two concepts; entrepre- neurial intention and innovation. In the conventional view, a single outstanding entrepreneur has an intention to induce innovation, and connects market opportunities and resources. However, this view cannot fully explain the situation of entrepreneurial activities led by a team. This article presents a new research framework in entrepreneurship research. First, an entrepreneur can have a relational intention that leads to constructing a partnership. Second, such a partnership, not an individual entrepreneur, has an emerged innovative intention that leads to carrying out innovation in order to establish the competitive advantage. Adopting this framework, we examine cases in the Japanese film industry and clarifying the relational development between entrepreneur’s intention and innovation. From this study a new theo- retical foundation on the dynamics of entrepreneurial intentions and outcomes in creative industries arises, and it unpacks the initial stage of innovation where organizations are newly created by employing micro viewpoints such as individuals and partnerships. Introduction ntrepreneurship demands a creative net- work and relationships to enable in- novation. Although numerous studies have recently highlighted entrepreneurial teams rather than individual entrepreneurs, the rela- tionship between the formation of such teams and the process of innovation is yet to be clar- ified. The question here is how and where the intention to induce innovation is formed, and how such an intention leads to the innovation if team entrepreneurial activities exist. In order to constructively address this ques- tion, this study focuses on the leaders of inno- vation as well as their intention leading to the innovation, using the three cases of Japanese E film production companies for analysis. Based on the exploratory descriptions and data anal- yses of the three cases, entrepreneurial activi- ties and the process of innovation in the creative industry 1 are also examined from the viewpoints of teamwork and partnership. Existing Studies: The Entrepreneurial Team and Its Intention Recent studies on entrepreneurial activities have paid more attention to entrepreneurs as a team rather than to the role of a single out- standing individual 2 (Ruef, Aldrich & Carter, 1 In Japan, the term ‘content industry’ is widely and officially used to mean ‘creative industry’. For example, the Content (kontentsu) Industry Promo- tion Act was enacted in 2004. Scholars also use these terms interchangeably. 2 In particular, the standpoint that the formation of entrepreneurs’ intentions and capabilities can be attributed to individuals’ characteristics is similar to the view of a single outstanding entrepreneur’s activities assumed in this article. See Lee and Wong (2004) for the concepts and analyses of individual characteristics on entrepreneurs’ intentions.