Light Bulb Moments: Where Do Student Entrepreneurs Get Their Ideas

Understanding how to support creative ideation is an important, yet, elusive, issue for marketing educators. To shed light, this study proposes ideation as a malleable state influenced by “outside-the-brain” resources. By examining venture concept ideation, this study captures the ideation–environment relationship using experience sampling to tap into the daily lives of student entrepreneurs. The findings identify how entrepreneurial ideas emerge from specific external interactions and engagements, which are contextualized using two Japanese conceptualizations of space, ba (場) and ma (間). The results inform both marketing education and entrepreneurial marketing.