The role of entrepreneurs is becoming increasingly important in Japanese industry and society. This role involves realization of innovations that broadly bring about more advanced lifestyles and production. The challenges of entrepreneurial marketing research are multilayered. In this special feature issue, we focus on a wide range of marketing phases to invigorate the activities of entrepreneurs responsible for innovation in a company or society. Innovation can broadly be divided into technology innovation, reliant on technological novelty; and value innovation, reliant on market novelty. The latter arises from the market and is crucial for marketing. We lack a sufficient understanding of the motivations and abilities entrepreneurs require to drive value innovations, and how to interact with the environment to manifest these individual motivations and abilities for value innovations. This special issue aims to advance these explorations in order to enhance value innovations.
