This article builds upon a growing body of research calling for a more contextual approach to entrepreneurship studies. It combines theoretical resources from Joas’s theory of creative action with institutional logics thinking. A model of the emergence of entrepreneurial action is developed as an outcome of a continuous dialogue between theoretical and empirical work. Entrepreneurial action is shown as emerging at the crossroads between tensions at the general level of institutional logics and tensions at the level of an individual’s life-orientation. Two main insights are offered for future theoretical and empirical developments. First, that it is possible to move beyond the artificial separation of ‘context’ and ‘individual’ in entrepreneurship studies to investigate the complex interweaving of individual, organisational and societal levels that comprises entrepreneurial activity. Second, the concept of entrepreneurial action has a relevance far beyond the creation of new business ventures and activities engaged in by owner-managers.