Idea sets: conceptualizing and measuring a new unit of analysis in entrepreneurship research

Idea sets—the complete stock of entrepreneurial ideas an individual has accessible within his or her memory at any given time—are proposed as a new unit of analysis through which the antecedents, processes, and outcomes of entrepreneurial opportunity recognition may be more fully understood. A number of dimensions are identified along which one person’s idea set may be compared with that of another person. These comprise the novelty, volume, content, stage of development, strategic value logic, and composite knowledge configuration of ideas within the idea set. The idea set construct and the methods advocated for its empirical operationalization provide a differentiated, comprehensive approach to investigating entrepreneurial opportunities. They also help to overcome sample selection and survival biases characterizing empirical research in this domain. A questionnaire-based idea set instrument, designed and tested in the corporate context, demonstrates good evidence of content, convergent and divergent validities

Entrepreneurship, Emerging Technologies, Emerging Markets

Academics and practitioners alike have long understood the benefits, if not the risks, of both emerging markets and emerging technologies.Yet it is only recently that foresighted firms have embraced emerging technologies and emerging markets through entrepreneurial activity. Emerging technologies and emerging markets present both unique challenges and tremendous opportunities for those firms and individuals who focus their search for competitive advantage on them. Here, we provide examples of effective commercial pathways for both intra- and entrepreneurial ventures embracing these phenomena. First, we describe how one intrapreneurial large firm is investigating emerging markets such as India and China (emerging economies) with emerging technologies to create a worldwide business solution power. Then the investigation of an emerging technology is provided, that of nanotechnology, by a small entrepreneurial firm utilizing emerging market skill sets to define and enable worldwide business solutions. Interestingly, both of the respective commercialization strategies are based on competency theory albeit, used differently. Finally, we discuss the ability of large and small firm competency-based strategies to wrest value from the opportunities inherent in emerging markets and technologies

A Review of Strategic Process Research

This article reviews research on the process of strategic management reported over the last six years in seven leading journals. Nine "streams" of work are identified and critiqued. The field is described as giving continuing attention to the possibilities and problems of strategic planning and decision making, but also moving into new areas of research - especially the problem of how the attention of decision makers is directed toward specific agendas for action. We recommend more studies that simultaneously consider strategy formulation and implementation and more studies that attempt to integrate methods and concerns across the various areas of process research. Finally, we recommend that future research give simultaneous attention to the content as well as the process of strategy