Barbara J. Bird

The Central Question in Entrepreneurial Cognition Research 2007

In this article, we take note of advances in the entrepreneurial cognition research stream. In doing so, we bring increasing attention to the usefulness of entrepreneurial cognition research. First, we offer and develop a central research question to further enable entrepreneurial cognition inquiry. Second, we present the conceptual background and some representative approaches to entrepreneurial cognition research that form the context for this question. Third, we introduce the articles in this Special Issue as framed by the central question and approaches to entrepreneurial cognition research, and suggest how they further contribute to this developing stream. Finally, we offer our views concerning the challenges and opportunities that await the next generation of entrepreneurial cognition scholarship. We therefore invite (and seek to enable) the growing community of entrepreneurship researchers from across multiple disciplines to further develop the “thinking–doing” link in entrepreneurship research. It is our goal to offer colleagues an effective research staging point from which they may embark upon many additional research expeditions and investigations involving entrepreneurial cognition.

Acting as If: Differentiating Entrepreneurial from Organizational Behavior:

This paper suggests that entrepreneurship is the process of “emergence.” An organizational behavior perspective on entrepreneurship would focus on the process of organizational emergence. The usefulness of the emergence metaphor is explored through an exploration of two questions that are the focus of much of the research in organizational behavior: “What do persons in organizations do?” (we will explore this question by looking at research and theory on the behaviors of managers), and “Why do they do what they do?” (ditto for motivation). The paper concludes with some implications for using the idea of emergence as a way to connect theories and methodologies from organizational behavior to entrepreneurship.

A gendered perspective on organizational creation

Literature on the creation of organizations is often cast within a masculine gender framework. This paper draws from three theoretical perspectives to develop a new perspective that broadens the view of organizational creation by encompassing the relative balance of feminine and masculine perspectives in the entrepreneurs venture start-up process and new venture attributes. We elaborate the relatively less visible feminine and personal perspective and compare this with the traditional or masculine perspective. Important to the discussion is the distinction between biology (sex: male and female, man and woman) and socialized perspectives (gender: masculine and feminine). While research and the general public often use the concept of gender loosely to signify sex, we follow a more precise feminist distinction. The paper advances new concepts of gender-maturity (an individual difference) and gender-balance (an organizational quality).

The Operation of Intentions in Time: The Emergence of the New Venture

Entrepreneurs’ timeframes for the birth and early development of new ventures offers a new lens for understanding the psychology and social construction of new organizations. This paper reviews the temporal aspects of new venture intentions. A model that features temporal brackets is presented.

The Successful Intelligence of High-Growth Entrepreneurs: Links to New Venture Growth

We develop a model of successful intelligence in entrepreneurship. The model was tested through interviews with 22 printing industry CEOs and responses from 143 founders of early-stage, high-growth printing and graphics businesses. Successful intelligence combined with entrepreneurial self-efficacy to predict swift action and multiple improvement actions (repeated goal-driven changes). Swift action and multiple improvement actions predicted higher subsequent venture growth across four years. This field study confirmed that successful intelligence consists of practical, analytical, and creative intelligence and that, together with entrepreneurial self-efficacy, it enables and motivates successful entrepreneurial behavior. Intelligence has received little entrepreneurship research attention; however, this empirical study suggests that specific intelligences should be included as predictors in studies of venture outcomes. The two entrepreneurial behaviors developed here are useful concepts beyond the entrepreneurship domain.

Entrepreneurial Behavior: Its Nature, Scope, Recent Research, and Agenda for Future Research

The end of all the cognition and motivation of entrepreneurs is to take some action in the world, and by doing so, give rise to a venture, an organization. Thoughts, intentions, motivations, learning, intelligence without action does not create economic value. The very nature of organizing is anchored in actions of individuals as they buy, sell, gather and deploy resources, work, etc. The values created by exploiting of opportunity undoubtedly include some that are intrapsychic and personal, but those we study, those of value to the readers of this book, are inherently interpersonal and social and thus observable and learnable. This chapter provides a brief overview of entrepreneurial behavior using a limited but hopefully representative lens on recent research. We call for more research on what entrepreneurs do and that this research be both more rigorous than what we currently have and also more creatively sourced.

Time and Entrepreneurship

Temporal dynamics are at the heart of entrepreneurship. This Special Issue of Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice presents a collection of papers focused on the intersection of time and entrepreneurial organization. Traditional approaches to the interface between entrepreneurship and time are grounded in western logic, where time is linear and scarce, faster is better, and the future is held to be more important than the past. The papers in this issue are framed by the editors in this perspective, but also suggest alternative conceptualizations of time that offer compelling new ways of understanding entrepreneurship.

International Entrepreneurship: The State of the Field

Editors Note: Periodically, it is helpful to take the pulse of our colleagues and determine what is actually being studied and taught. In 1990, the Academy of Management In the United States formed task forces and charged them with surveying Academy members regarding the Internationalization of various management disciplines. The following article reports the results of the survey of Entrepreneurship Division members of the Academy.

Conflicts in the Commercialization of Knowledge: Perspectives from Science and Entrepreneurship

Conflicts of interest and conflicts of values stand between university-based research and commercialization of that knowledge. Such conflicts are embedded in science faculties and serve to delay, rechannel, or deter the commercial applications of research. Scales measuring these conflicts are developed and presented and the Impact on entrepreneurial behavior and university roles is noted. A comparison between science and management faculty illustrates the differences in values and orientations that reside within the university institution.

The Stages Model of High-Tech Venture Founding: Tried but True?

Recent large sample studies of start-up event sequences reported more stochasticity at a population level of analysis than the stages model would have predicted. This study examined a random sample of 18 technology-intensive start-ups in manufacturing and business service industries and found examples of both the stages model and an alternative. Stages model start-ups significantly outperformed the others.