Entrepreneurial action

This study investigates value co-creation in entrepreneurship: it focuses practically on the process through which the entrepreneur's new value proposition meets the customer's problem and pain. It argues that successful entrepreneurs tend to be more empathic than unsuccessful entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs who offer their new values through an empathic relationship tend to learn vital market knowledge that shapes a shared mental model between themselves and the consumer that increases the likelihood of value co-creation. The performance of this relationship improves when there is a match between the entrepreneurs' learning approach and her initial perception of the opportunity pursued. Matching between learning skills and empathy also enhances the empathy capacity of the entrepreneur. Both matching mechanisms are important for value co-creation.

Analysis of the impact of McMullen and Shepherd (2006) on entrepreneurship theory.

Using a transaction-level analysis of 1,040 small lumber exporters from 52 countries, we develop and test a framework wherein internationalizing entrepreneurs pair affordable loss logics (ALL) with real options reasoning (ROR) to generate value-creating opportunities while substantively forestalling the unfavorable impacts of trade partner opportunism. Through this, our study extends the literature on international market entry by identifying novel mechanisms employed by entrepreneurs to navigate the cross-currents lying between opportunity and opportunism. In addition, we offer fresh insights to the ongoing debate concerning the applicability ROR to business venturing contexts. By bridging ROR and ALL, our study extends and enhances efforts to apply ROR as a descriptor and predictor of market entry decisions.

In this paper we explore creativity as an antecedent of entrepreneurial intentions. Drawing from social cognitive theory, we explain and empirically illustrate how creative self-efficacy encourages the development of entrepreneurial intentions. We also examine the mediating roles of attitudes and creative process engagement in the creative self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intentions relationship. Based on a pre-post-survey design, in seven entrepreneurship courses taught in three Canadian universities, our findings support the role of creativity as an antecedent to entrepre-neurship, but also hint towards some boundaries/limitations on attitudes as the primary focus of entrepreneurship education programs. We draw a number of implications for the theory and practice of entrepreneurship education.

This paper engages with the diversity of entrepreneurship, aiming to making it intelligible. We portray entrepreneurship is a dynamic force that keeps eyes on the horizon and feet on the ground. In the first sense, entrepreneurship is a problem. Through their envisioning entrepreneurs evade the situational constraints of the actual states of affairs and sense new problems. In the second sense, entrepreneurship is grounded in the specific practices of a particular community. We approach this diversity of entrepreneurship and its activities in terms of a reciprocal process of problematizing, involving a substantive and meaningful framing for entrepreneurial activity, and as a way towards a deeper understanding of what entrepreneurs do.

The rapid advancement of computationally complex machine learning systems, commonly known as artificial intelligence (AI), is the fruit of a decades-long effort to endow machines with cognitive capabilities that equal or even exceed those possessed by human actors. As the growing sophistication of AI algorithms revolutionizes entrepreneurial action in uncertain environments, these advancements raise an important set of questions for future theory-building in entrepreneurial action, creativity, and decision-making research. In this paper, we take up these critical questions by exploring how advancing AI systems provide novel solutions for resolving the fundamental challenges of modal uncertainty in entrepreneurial decision environments. And in doing so, AI algorithms create new possibilities for future forms of entrepreneurial action. We conclude the paper with a robust discussion of future research at the intersection of AI and entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this article is to address key aspects of Wood, Bakker, and Fisher’s (AMR, in press) time-calibrated theory of entrepreneurial action, through which they take important steps towards identifying temporal calibrations that characterize the business venturing lifecycle. The issue that concerns us with the Woods et al. theorization is the extent to which it unnecessarily constrains itself to reasoned intentionality. While we do not doubt that logical reasoning and judgment often play a role in opportunity exploitation and that such logics can be instrumental to founding and scaling a successful enterprise, we would still assert that unintended and unreasoned elements of entrepreneurial action elude and even weaken the connection between an entrepreneur’s conscious time calibration and the actual timing of events, thereby limiting the descriptive and predictive value Wood et al.’s framework. A growing body of research shows that unreasoned drivers (e.g., disinhibition, impulsivity) are non-ignorable facets of human activity that are equally indispensable to a predictive framework for entrepreneurial action. Thus, the better pathway is to apply the broad-spectrum approach of Lerner, Hunt and Dimov (2018), who argue for the treatment of rational and non-rational drivers as empirically and conceptually coexistent. As Martin Buber wrote, “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.”

Evaluating and exploiting imagined opportunities involves gathering and processing idiosyncratic market knowledge, but individuals differ in their abilities and propensities in this task. We propose a new construct, the entrepreneurial propensity for market analysis (EPMA), and argue that this propensity mediates the relationship between entrepreneurial intention and action. We test these relationships in a study of 213 prospective entrepreneurs from science and technology parks (STPs) in Iran. Results support the mediating effect of EPMA on the entrepreneurial act.

Purpose. The purpose of this paper is to investigate, through practices and capabilities, how entrepreneurs use microfinance in a context of serious constraints. Design/methodology/approach. The chosen methodology for this paper is longitudinal. A three-and-a-half-year study was conducted to be able to capture the entrepreneurial journeys of ten entrepreneurs at a micro-level in the developing economy of Ghana. This was augmented by a further 15 interviews with entrepreneurs and loan officers. This data is used to develop a theoretical model of entrepreneurial practices in this context. Findings. The paper identifies two distinct pathways for understanding the recursive nature of entrepreneurial practices. It highlights how entrepreneurs generate capabilities through microfinance resources through convergent or divergent venturing in response to the serious constraints they face. This is identified as a generative recursive mechanism for the process, representing the 'chain of actions' and how entrepreneurs engage with their 'settings' and 'intended relations' in practice. Research limitations/implications. The research is limited by its focus on one nation in Sub-Saharan Africa and therefore how the findings may be transferred to other contexts. Originality/value. The paper contributes to a practice approach in entrepreneurship by identifying how mechanisms of practice relate to entrepreneurial action in this context. It also provides an important contribution to discussion at the intersection of entrepreneurship and the capabilities approach by using Amartya Sen's concepts of process and opportunity freedom to understand practices.

This paper explores the relationship between the study of entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurs we study. While scholars typically adopt a detached, third-person stance for the purpose of explaining and predicting entrepreneurial action, entrepreneurs instead operate in a first-person stance of deciding what to do. The two stances cannot be reduced to one another. We argue that an engaged dialogue-a second-person stance-can bring scholars and entrepreneurs together into a unifying practical decision-making perspective. By working to develop this integrative voice in scholarship, we can collapse the dualism of rigour and relevance.

There is growing evidence that human biology and behavior is influenced by infectious microorganisms. One such microorganism is the protozoan Toxoplasma gondii (TG). Using longitudinal data covering the female population of Denmark, we extend research on the relationship between TG infection and entrepreneurial activity and outcomes. Results indicate that TG infection is associated with a subsequent increase in the probability of becoming an entrepreneur, and is linked to other outcomes including venture performance. With parasite behavioral manipulation antithetical to rational judgement, we join a growing conversation on biology and alternative drivers of business venturing. [ Note: the Article can be found at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338857788_Nothing_Ventured_Nothing_Gained_Parasite_Infection_is_Associated_with_Entrepreneurial_Initiation_Engagement_and_Performance ]

PRE-PRINT of Forthcoming Article in Academy of Management Perspectives ABSTRACT: Across the social sciences, there is a growing recognition that rural innovation and entrepreneurship are at the front lines of responding to increasing dynamism and complexity in social, cultural, and economic environments. Yet, a review of the disparate literatures on rural venturing reveals that this research has largely escaped the attention of management and entrepreneurship scholars. Our analysis suggests that scholarly progress has been forestalled by three interconnected research practices: gap-spotting scholarship, decontextualized theory building, and an allegiance to binary oppositions. In response to the challenges posed by these practices, this article identifies three alternative, multi-paradigmatic research tools to enhance the effectiveness of management scholars in contributing to multi-disciplinary fields of inquiry such as rural entrepreneurship: problematization, hybridization, and contextualization. Through the application of these tools, we develop new avenues to consider the complex interplay between community, space and place, novel innovation pathways, the power of traditional values and contexts, and the varied nature of modern business venturing. Our work also contributes fresh perspectives on the manner in which management scholars can offer more effective conceptual leadership in multi-disciplinary fields to theorize complex phenomena.

This paper proposes a model of entrepreneurial action that integrates three distinct elements. First, it brings together action and time to articulate a recursive relationship between perception and action, mediated by consequences. Second, it brings together action and context to ground the entrepreneur’s perceptions and actions in a mesh of social orders and practices. Third, it articulates the content of perceptions and actions as discursive entries and exits in a social language game of giving and asking for reasons. We discuss a number of implications for a systematic understanding of different manifestations of entrepreneurship.

The rapid advancement of computationally complex machine learning systems, commonly known as artificial intelligence (AI), is the fruit of a decades-long effort to endow machines with cognitive capabilities that equal or even exceed those possessed by human actors. As the growing sophistication of AI algorithms revolutionizes entrepreneurial action in uncertain environments, these advancements raise an important set of questions for future theory-building in entrepreneurial action, creativity, and decision-making research. In this paper, we take up these critical questions by exploring how advancing AI systems provide novel solutions for resolving the fundamental challenges of modal uncertainty in entrepreneurial decision environments. And in doing so, AI algorithms create new possibilities for future forms of entrepreneurial action. We conclude the paper with a robust discussion of future research at the intersection of AI and entrepreneurship.

This article elaborates on a lively and rapidly evolving conversation central to entrepreneurship: the underpinnings of entrepreneurial action. In particular, we respond to a critique published in this journal by Brown, Packard, and Bylund (BPB), in which they argue that all EA is based on intendedly-rational judgment. The empirical reality of rational, deliberative intentionality in entrepreneurship is beyond dispute and we have argued that behavioral logics do not simply supplant intendedly-rational ones. However, mounting evidence suggests that the wide-spectrum framework developed by Lerner, Hunt and Dimov – ranging from impulse-driven, a-rational action to deeply deliberative, rational action – offers a more veridical and useful perspective. Although BPB's critique succeeds in underscoring the exciting challenges facing entrepreneurship scholars; in our view, the critique largely relies on philosophical argumentation and definitional boundary-setting that are inconsistent with decades of scientific advancement in the psychological sciences. Given this, and recent empirical evidence from entrepreneurship scholars, we think it would be counter-productive to consider entrepreneurship as the sole domain of human activity completely circumscribed by rational judgment.

[forthcoming in Journal of Business Venturing Insights https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1Y3k~8MxvtNisU] This article elaborates on a lively and rapidly evolving conversation central to entrepreneurship: the underpinnings of entrepreneurial action. In particular, we respond to a critique published in this journal by Brown, Packard, and Bylund (BPB), in which they argue that all EA is based on intendedly-rational judgment. The empirical reality of rational, deliberative intentionality in entrepreneurship is beyond dispute and we have argued that behavioral logics do not simply supplant intendedly-rational ones. However, mounting evidence suggests that the wide-spectrum framework developed by Lerner, Hunt and Dimov (2018) – ranging from impulse-driven, a-rational action to deeply deliberative, rational action – offers a more veridical and useful perspective. Although BPB’s critique succeeds in underscoring the exciting challenges facing entrepreneurship scholars; in our view, the critique largely relies on philosophical argumentation and definitional boundary-setting that are inconsistent with decades of scientific advancement in the psychological sciences. Given this, and recent empirical evidence from entrepreneurship scholars, we think it would be counter-productive to consider entrepreneurship as the sole domain of human activity completely circumscribed by rational judgment. *** Lerner, D., Hunt, R., & Dimov, D. (2018). Action! Moving Beyond the Intendedly-Rational Logics of Entrepreneurship. Journal of Business Venturing, 33(1), 52-69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2017.10.002

Develops integrated perspective on the dualism of ADHD in entreprenurship, both across the extended entrepreneurial process and within particular stages/activites.

A vital aspect of entrepreneurial action is the translation of entrepreneur’s opportunity into new value creation. This paper examines the moderating roles of the founder’s experience and innovation degree on the relationship between opportunity confidence and new value creation intention (NVCI) at the pre-founding stage of a business. For this purpose, it uses survey data from 157 prospective entrepreneurs in the ICT industry from university incubators in Iran. Using SEM, we find that experience, alone, does not moderate the relationship between opportunity confidence and NVCI. However, if entrepreneurs have required opportunity confidence, then medium and high-level innovation can increase the likelihood of acting on the opportunity for novice and experienced entrepreneurs, respectively. For novice entrepreneurs, the innovation variance from low to medium moderates the relationship between opportunity confidence and intent. In fact, this relationship is strengthened by the medium novelty level. Whereas, for experienced entrepreneurs, the variance from medium to high, moderates the relationship that is strengthened by the high novelty level.