The Systematic Search For Entrepreneurial Discoveries

Entrepreneurs do much more than manage small businesses. At the heart of entrepreneurship is the discovery process. An idea is conceived and then exploited for profit. But if the idea is neither useful nor unique, its exploitation will generate only average profits. Therefore, the idea and the process that leads to its discovery are of the utmost importance to the success of any new venture. Can the discovery process be taught, or must one be born with the talent to unearth promising opportunities? Fiet argues that entrepreneurial discovery can indeed be taught, and he proposes a theory of the informational elements that constitute the discovery process. Entrepreneurship as an academic discipline has often been criticized for lacking intellectual rigor and a theoretical foundation. Fiet supplies both in this scholarly book, which approaches entrepreneurial competence from an academic perspective. There are three primary characteristics of entrepreneurial competence: tacit knowledge of an entrepreneur's field of endeavor, which can be improved by trial and error; the knowledge of decision rules that enable one to make rational informational investments based upon the signals of opportunities; and the unequal distribution of entrpreneurial competence among the population. Recognizing that entrepreneurs start out at different stages of competence, Fiet asserts that anyone cam improve using his book as a pedagogical aid. This volume fills a void in the entrepreneurship literature, which too often is indistinguishable from that which informs courses on small business management.

This book organizes entrepreneurship theory in a way that constitutes a new body of knowledge, which is Informational Entrepreneurship. It can serve as a basis for teaching entrepreneurship and reducing performance uncertainty. Although entrepreneurship is not entirely about information, information determines how it can be systematically understood while depending less on luck. It also offers the only known, experimentally tested approach that incorporates decision support tools. Other known approaches rely on exposition for validation; whereas, Informational Entrepreneurship uses two-sample experiments that controlled for other explanations as well as experimenter bias. It will appeal to those studying and teaching entrepreneurship who are looking for a prescriptive approach, rather than a descriptive approach.

"In the only known program of prescriptive entrepreneurship, James Fiet provides a marked contrast to the standard descriptive focus of entrepreneurship studies. The author lays out a program of research to develop and test theoretically derived guidelines for how to improve the success rate and performance of aspiring entrepreneurs. Rather than describing what entrepreneurs to, he prescribes and tests what they ought to do." "The book will be of interest to business and entrepreneurship scholars and teachers, students and aspiring entrepreneurs who are looking for prescriptive tools to help them launch a successful business."--BOOK JACKET.

Identifying opportunities is essential to successful entrepreneurial activity; but good opportunities may be missed if entrepreneurs fail to understand when and where to search for them, or appreciate the significance of timing and place in their search. This book identifies and addresses three problems which face aspiring entrepreneurs. The first is finding a promising idea to exploit; the second is to know when to stop searching, or pursue a more promising search; and the third is to understand how the entrepreneur can locate him or herself in time and space to most economically locate a discovery. As well as developing original theories to solve these problems, this book offers practical solutions, which aspiring entrepreneurs can learn and implement through theory-based activities, giving them an opportunity to practice while gaining an understanding of both why and how these approaches work. Showing how timing becomes more salient than time, and place more important than space, this book combines theoretical and practical guidance which will be of great interest to entrepreneurship researchers, educators, students and aspiring entrepreneurs.

This book offers a critique of social justice theory and its impact on entrepreneurship scholarship. It traces its deep roots in postmodernism by positioning entrepreneurship within these new intellectual, social, and economic environments. It highlights current philosophical assumptions, with implications for boundary conditions that we apply as scientists. Science depends on theoretical assumptions and boundary conditions. Unfortunately, a glaring weakness in entrepreneurship research has been its general failure to identify these premises. No theory is universally applicable, so its assumptions and boundary conditions are what give it analytical power. Where do they come from? Simply stated, they come from a theory's philosophy of science. However, even more rare than stating assumptions and boundary conditions is to discuss a study's governing philosophy. In fact, no known research published in entrepreneurship has discussed a study's philosophical orientation. This provocative work details postmodern concerns related to critical theory, their origins, their status, and specifically how they impact entrepreneurship and those who are not designated as either the victimized or part of the white patriarchy. It will challenge the current direction of entrepreneurship research and confront the general acceptance of the tenets of postmodernism among management scholars.

Interest in the functioning of the human mind can certainly be traced to Plato and Aristotle who often dealt with issues of perceptions and motivations. While the Greeks may have contemplated the human condition, the modern study of the human mind can be traced back to Sigmund Freud (1900) and the psychoanalytic movement. He began the exploration of both conscious and unconscious factors that propelled humans to engage in a variety of behaviors. While Freud’s focus may have been on repressed sexuality our focus in this volume lies elsewhere. We are concerned herein with the expression of the cognitions, motivations, passions, intentions, perceptions, and emotions associated with entrepreneurial behaviors. We are attempting in this volume to expand on the work of why entrepreneurs think d- ferently from other people (Baron, 1998, 2004). During the decade of the 1990s the eld of entrepreneurship research seemingly abandoned the study of the entrepreneur. This was the result of earlier research not being able to demonstrate some unique entrepreneurial personality, trait, or char- teristic (Brockhaus and Horwitz, 1986). It was both a naïve and simplistic search for the “holy grail” of what made entrepreneurs the way they are. However, many of the researchers in this volume have never gave up the belief that a better und- standing of the mind of the entrepreneur would give us a better understanding of the processes that lead to the creation of new ventures.

The book explores various aspects of cognitive and motivational psychology as they impact entrepreneurial behavior. Building upon the 2009 volume, Understanding the Entrepreneurial Mind, the editors and contributors explore the cognitions, motivations, passions, intentions, perceptions, and emotions associated with entrepreneurial behaviors, in each case preserving their original chapters and enhancing them with thoughtful and targeted updates, reflecting on the most recent developments in theory and practice, telling the story of what has transpired in the last decade in the field of entrepreneurial psychology. The volume addresses such questions as: Why do some people start business and others do not? Is entrepreneurship a natural quality or can it be taught? Do entrepreneurs think differently from others? While there is a great deal of literature exploring the dynamics of new firm creation, policies to promote innovation and technology transfer, and the psychology of creativity; research on entrepreneurial mindset or cognition is relatively new, and draws largely from such related fields as organizational behavior, cognitive and social psychology, career development, and consumer research. In this book, editors Brännback and Carsrud have reassembled the contributors to Understanding the Entrepreneurial Mind to discuss new research paradigms given their vantage point years after the original volume was published. Featuring the most current literature references, Revisiting the Entrepreneurial Mind continues to challenge conventional approaches to entrepreneurship and articulate an agenda for future research.

The Encyclopedia of New Venture Management explores the skills needed to succeed in business, along with the potential risks and rewards and environmental settings and characteristics.