Finding the first among equals: role of cognitive styles in entrepreneurial decision-making of novices

Effectuation theory explains how expert entrepreneurs differ in decision-making during situations of high uncertainty and low information availability. Exploring the cognitive reasoning behind effectual decision-making offers fertile ground for research as well as teaching entrepreneurship. Cognitive styles have proved to be useful in studying information processing and decision-making of individuals. With increasing attention being paid to entrepreneurial, cognition, researchers have also studied the role cognitive styles in entrepreneurial decision-making. Using a sample of 400 university students from Germany and the Netherlands we investigate the relationship between the participants' cognitive style and their preference for making Causal versus Effectual decision-making. We find a strong relationship between the causal decision-making and the cognitive style index score as well as the affordable loss aspect of effectuation through our ANOVA analysis. We present our case for why these relationships matter in designing entrepreneurship education

Entrepreneurial cognition of the business model construct:A mixed methods study of stem and non-stem entrepreneurs

Applying the theory of socially situated cognition, we study how entrepreneurs cognitively process the business model construct during the early stages of launching technology-based new ventures. Through an abductive reasoning procedure, we aggregate four underlying socially situated cognitive functions of the business model and describe how these functions facilitate opportunity development. We examine if the entrepreneur’s educational background (STEM vs non-STEM) influences their cognitive processing of the construct. We discuss the contribution of our study to the literature on managerial cognition, business models, and to practice in detail

Entrepreneurial cognition of the business model construct:A mixed methods study of stem and non-stem entrepreneurs

Applying the theory of socially situated cognition, we study how entrepreneurs cognitively process the business model construct during the early stages of launching technology-based new ventures. Through an abductive reasoning procedure, we aggregate four underlying socially situated cognitive functions of the business model and describe how these functions facilitate opportunity development. We examine if the entrepreneur’s educational background (STEM vs non-STEM) influences their cognitive processing of the construct. We discuss the contribution of our study to the literature on managerial cognition, business models, and to practice in detail

Entrepreneurial cognition of the business model construct:A mixed methods study of stem and non-stem entrepreneurs

Applying the theory of socially situated cognition, we study how entrepreneurs cognitively process the business model construct during the early stages of launching technology-based new ventures. Through an abductive reasoning procedure, we aggregate four underlying socially situated cognitive functions of the business model and describe how these functions facilitate opportunity development. We examine if the entrepreneur’s educational background (STEM vs non-STEM) influences their cognitive processing of the construct. We discuss the contribution of our study to the literature on managerial cognition, business models, and to practice in detail

"Yes and. . ., but wait. . ., heck no!":A socially situated cognitive approach towards understanding how startup entrepreneurs process critical feedback

We examine sensebreaking, a meaning void, that entrepreneurs experience due to critical feedback from early stakeholders using the socially situated cognition perspective. We show that sensebreaking aids novel sensemaking via three mechanisms-redirecting, reframing, and questioning-through longitudinal analysis of weekly diary reports that we collected from 30 entrepreneurs for one year. We describe the cognitive changes due to novel sensemaking. We derive a process model that illustrates how sensebreaking-sensemaking iterations over time effect changes to the shared cognition between entrepreneurs and their stakeholders while driving opportunity development. We advance the opportunity coconstruction literature by adding microlevel understanding of stakeholder interactions and explicating their effects on entrepreneurial cognition