The Psychological Basis of Entrepreneurial Alertness (original) (raw)
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Entrepreneurial Alertness and Opportunity Identification: Where Are We Now
Since its inception, entrepreneurship has struggled with the academic version of a new venture’s liability of newness; the field was considered pre-paradigmatic (Ireland et al., 2005b), bereft of theory or conceptual frameworks (Phan, 2004; Zahra and Dess, 2001) and so lacking in understanding that investigators could not agree on what constituted the phenomenon of interest: any kind of self-employment? New venture creation? Corporate venturing? Something else? All of the above (Gartner, 1990; Ireland et al., 2005a; Low, 2001, Vesper, 1982)?
Entrepreneurial Alertness and Opportunity Identification 3.0: Yes, We Can Talk Empirical
In 2008, we closed our literature review about entrepreneurial opportunity identification with a call to the discipline that " the game's afoot! " 1 It was clearly evident that the global market process had entered a period of creative destruction with financial markets experiencing meltdowns at the same time that new industries such as cleantech were emerging. These are moments in time that most social scientists dream of: naturally occurring phenomena that allow science to pit competing theories against each other to assess which, if any, provides the most useful explanation of the phenomena. In particular, we challenged the structurationists to make predictions about how the cleantech industry would organize itself and then, carefully and thoroughly chronicle what unfolded; we challenged the advocates of social cognition theory to conduct longitudinal studies about the development of the mental models and decision processes entrepreneurs used to make sense of the emerging industry and the opportunities they perceived it did or did not present; we challenged the social network theorists to conduct longitudinal studies regarding the networking behaviors of the entrepreneurs who introduced new products, services, processes, and business models in the emerging cleantech industry. Frankly, it wouldn't really matter if it turned out that none of these theoretical approaches to entrepreneurial alertness and opportunity identification proved useful because, regardless of the outcome, we would learn so much in the process of systematic empirical observation and testing.
Entrepreneurial alertness in the pursuit of new opportunities
Journal of Business Venturing, 2012
The recognition and development of new opportunities are at the heart of entrepreneurship. Building from Kirzner's (1973, 1999) work, cognition theory, and McMullen and Shepherd's (2006) recent development, we offer a model involving three distinct elements of alertness: scanning and search, association and connection, and evaluation and judgment. We then conduct multiple studies to develop and validate a 13-item alertness scale that captures these three dimensions. Results demonstrate appropriate dimensionality, strong reliability, and content, convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity. The resultant instrument provides researchers with a valuable tool for probing the entrepreneurial opportunity development process including antecedents and outcomes.
Entrepreneurial Alertness Research: Past and Future
SAGE Open
The construct of entrepreneurial alertness has been gaining considerable interest from academics because it is at the heart of the entrepreneurial process. Consequently, there has been a substantial increase in the number of academic papers over the years. However, this is a highly fragmented field of research that aggregates contributions from researchers in the fields of economics and strategy, entrepreneurship, and psychology. Also, in recent decades, the concept of entrepreneurial alertness has been studied from different perspectives, being considered, on one hand, as cognitive capacity, a dynamic capacity or a skill of the entrepreneur and, on the other hand, as an organizational factor that affects a company’s performance and a source of competitive advantage. The analysis reveals a set of future research avenues that may contribute to the development of the entrepreneurial alertness research field.
The Factors Contributing to Entrepreneurial Alertness
Given the growth and role of entrepreneurship today, it is becoming increasingly important to understand how new entrepreneurial opportunities get developed. Entrepreneurs play a critically important role in the economy. By spotting opportunities and taking action to exploit them, they drive the process of market production and the fulfillment of social and economic needs. Discussions of the emergence of new entrepreneurial opportunities often include “eureka” moments, but we currently lack a deep understanding of why some individuals are able to spot the opportunities that most people cannot see. We attribute the difference to a loosely defined quality that Kirzner called “entrepreneurial alertness”. While this has been a useful basis for a considerable body of entrepreneurship research to-date, it is still unsatisfactory in several ways. To achieve this goal we distribute questionnaires between 115 M.A. student’s from Economics and Management college of University of Sistan&Baluchestan for the years 2012 and 2013. Analysis was done by correlation test. Results showed that there is significant relationship between creativity, self-efficacy, locus of control, social networks, prior knowledge, educational issues, environment and student’s entrepreneurial alertness. This survey can be used to develop potential entrepreneurs in different fields in determining of key elements of opportunity recognition, training and improving of that.
Entrepreneurial alertness: a systematic literature review
Journal of Small Business & Entrepreneurship, 2020
Recently, cognitive perspectives have garnered increasing attention in entrepreneurship alertness research. But the broader psychological basis of the alertness, which differentiates intrinsic and phasic aspects of alertness, has somehow been neglected, even though some entrepreneurship scholars have described alertness as the main cognitive capability of entrepreneurs in recognizing entrepreneurial opportunities. In this systematic review, the literature of entrepreneurial alertness has been critically examined. We categorize the previous works into five broad research themes: the alertness construct itself, its cognitive foundations, its operational measurement, the theoretical antecedents of alertness, and its consequences. We then identify two gaps where future research should direct greater efforts. First, past attention to the cognitive foundations of alertness has largely focused on its phasic aspects without exploration of the role of intrinsic alertness. The recent separate theorizing of opportunity creation/discovery has only begun to explore the potential of intrinsic alertness in opportunity spotting. Secondly, a lack of attention to establishing a clear definition of the alertness construct has hampered development of valid and robust measurement instruments, which may have confounded past efforts to empirically confirm the role of alertness in a range of theoretical models. RÉSUMÉ R ecemment, les perspectives cognitives ont suscit e une attention croissante de la part de la recherche sur la vigilance des entreprises. Mais le fondement psychologique plus large de la vigilance, diff erenciant les aspects intrins eques et phasiques de cette derni ere, a d'une certaine mani ere et e n eglig e, bien que certains sp ecialistes de l'entrepreneuriat aient d ecrit la vigilance comme principale capacit e cognitive des entrepreneurs dans la reconnaissance des opportunit es d'entreprendre. Dans cette revue syst ematique, la litt erature sur la vigilance des entreprises a fait l'objet d'un examen critique. Nous avons class e les pr ec edents travaux en cinq grands th emes de recherche : la construction de la vigilance elle-même, ses fondements cognitifs, sa mesure op erationnelle, les ant ec edents th eoriques de la vigilance et ses cons equences. Ensuite, nous avons identifi e deux lacunes sur lesquelles les futures recherches devraient concentrer leurs efforts.
Journal of Southwest Jiaotong University, 2020
The motive of this research paper is to examine entrepreneurial alertness as a determinant for opportunity identification by nascent entrepreneurs in Osun State, Nigeria. Because nascent entrepreneurs have received much attention from stakeholders, there is a dearth of research on nascent entrepreneurs in the Nigerian context. This study used a survey research design. The population of the study was 202 nascent entrepreneurs in Osun State, Nigeria. The study employed a random sampling technique, and 202 questionnaires were administered and ultimately returned while a minimum sample size calculated using G-power was 107 with a medium-size effect of 0.15. Data were analyzed through the SmartPLS. The finding reveals that entrepreneurial munificence determines entrepreneurial alertness than entrepreneurial attention. The result also shows that information mediates the linkage between entrepreneurial attention and entrepreneurial alertness, which is empirically significant. Also, informa...
A theory of entrepreneurial opportunity identification and development
This paper builds on existing theoretical and empirical studies in the area of entrepreneurial opportunity identification and development. It utilizes Dubin's [Theory Building, (second ed.). Free Press, New York, 1978.] theory building framework to propose a theory of the opportunity identification process. It identifies entrepreneur's personality traits, social networks, and prior knowledge as antecedents of entrepreneurial alertness to business opportunities. Entrepreneurial alertness, in its turn, is a necessary condition for the success of the opportunity identification triad: recognition, development, and evaluation. A theoretical model, laws of interaction, a set of propositions, and suggestions for further research are provided. D