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Intentions are central to entrepreneurial thinking and thus entrepreneurial action yet we have not explored the different pathways of how intent evolves. How does an easily assessed measure of cognitive style influence how entrepreneurs develop their intentions?

We examine how cognitive style interacts with entrepreneurial intentions testing the model separately with subjects scoring as Intuitives or Analytics on cognitive style, plus nationality and gender as covariates with entrepreneurial intensity as a prospective moderator, using 528 university students from Norway, Russia and Finland.

Cognitive style does moderate the intentions model. For intuitives, country influenced social norms and entrepreneurial intensity proved a moderator. For analytics, neither perceived desirability, country, nor entrepreneurial intensity were significant.

We will replicate these findings in different samples, especially non-WEIRD settings. It will also be useful to test alternate measures of cognitive style and other likely moderators.

We offer diagnostics for educators and ecosystem actors given that our findings suggest intriguing differences in the entrepreneurial mindset.

Understanding multiple pathways exist to entrepreneurial intent and thus action helps policymakers and entrepreneurial champions better able to help nurture entrepreneurs and thus entrepreneurship in their communities.

Cognitive style has dramatic effects on the specification of the formal intentions model arguing for multiple pathways to entrepreneurial intent. For example, two entrepreneurs might arrive at the same intention but through very different processes because they differ in cognitive style.

This study endeavors to decode the propensity for entrepreneurial action by addressing the perceptions of feasibility and desirability stemming from entrepreneurs' and non-entrepreneurs’ appraisal of holding marketing capabilities; complemented by the direct and indirect effects of market stakeholders' support, assessed as bridging or buffering the entrepreneurial action.

Three groups were formed from a random sample of 1,957 Canadian (from Quebec) respondents to an online questionnaire: non-entrepreneurs with low entrepreneurial intentions, non-entrepreneurs with high entrepreneurial intentions and entrepreneurs with high entrepreneurial intentions.

The analyses revealed salient effects of perceptions of feasibility and desirability, coupled with appraisals of possessing marketing capabilities, on entrepreneurial propensity; and their strengthened relations when obtaining stakeholders' support. Overall, the results suggest that perceived market feasibility and market desirability are prominent factors in differentiating between entrepreneurial and non-entrepreneurial action, and the type and function of stakeholders' support are prominent in differentiating between intentions.

Practical implications include facilitating the transmission of marketing knowledge to novice entrepreneurs through higher education and the ecosystem.

The authors show that perceptions of feasibility and desirability are particularly dependent on the entrepreneur's perceived marketing capabilities and perceptions of entrepreneurial ecosystem supportiveness. This study thus captures a fuller range of the intentions–action relationship by gauging the unidimensional approach to entrepreneurial action through intertwining attributes at the individual and market levels. It takes a new look at feasibility and desirability through marketing capabilities; and offers a more robust classification of stakeholders' support—institution/people, bridging/buffering. Practical implications include facilitating the transmission of marketing knowledge to novice entrepreneurs through higher education and the ecosystem.

Focused feedback, such as mentoring and coaching, is a crucial ingredient for generating the intellectual capital needed for successful venture creation and has become a structural resource offered to entrepreneurs in business incubator/accelerator programs. Yet so far, literature has remained silent on the way that entrepreneurs differ in their engagement with focused feedback in such programs. This study poses the question of how focused feedback engagement shapes cognitive development during value creation (i.e. business opportunity development), aimed at the construction of a taxonomy of such feedback engagement.

Focusing on cognitive learning outcomes, we carried out a qualitative analysis using NVivo to perform content analysis on the logbooks of 70 entrepreneurs engaged in business opportunity development in a highly regarded accelerator program.

Results show that engagement with focused feedback and its effects relate to the state of tangibility of the entrepreneur’s value offer and to the amount of prior entrepreneurial experience. We also develop a promising taxonomy to classify entrepreneurs on their learning needs and outcomes (e.g. procedural versus declarative knowledge).

This study brings together types of human learning (types of knowledge acquired) with types of focused feedback. This connection has been speculated to exist in entrepreneurial settings; this study provides strong initial evidence that argues for more explicit consideration in practice. Adding the intellectual capital perspective further enabled this study to better address implications for practice as well as motivate powerful new directions for research.

Research shows that innovation is imperative for business competitiveness and that entrepreneurs are stimulators of innovation. This is particularly true for younger entrepreneurs, who are recognized as having technological savvy, high dependency on the web, low fear of change and high zeal for challenges. However, not all businesses headed by younger entrepreneurs innovate, and research on younger entrepreneurs' innovation is lacking. This study assessed the main drivers of innovation in a sample of young Canadian entrepreneurs leading businesses in the initiation phase.

A sample of young Canadian entrepreneurs leading businesses in the initiation phase has been employed. This study is based on younger entrepreneurs and draws on the definition of generations Y and Z (Taylor and Keeter, 2010). It examines the initial stage of a business, up to 3 years. The sample includes 100 adults (65% female), whose ages ranged from 18 to 34 years. The drivers to innovate included external support (e.g. mentoring, funds, accelerators) and internal factors, including psychological attributes (i.e. risk-taking) and entrepreneurial motivations. Regression and structural equation modeling analyses have been conducted.

The findings revealed that entrepreneurial motivations for achieving self-fulfillment and contributing to the world, which are prevalent among younger generations, fostered innovation both directly and indirectly through the mediating effect of external support and risk-taking. External support fostered innovation not directly but through the mediating effect of risk-taking; in contrast, internal factors directly propelled innovation. This finding demonstrates the significance younger generations attribute to internal factors over external factors in the quest for innovation.

This study can be an intriguing starting point for future studies to examine in more depth the intertwined role of external and internal factors in accelerating innovation among younger entrepreneurs. Studies could examine various psychological attributes and professional and business capabilities (Zahra, 2021) as well as external factors.

Our findings add to this literature in stressing the need to strengthen risk-taking among younger entrepreneurs, which is affected by external support and produces innovation; and reinforce the relevance of the resource-based view in revealing younger entrepreneurs' avenues to develop innovation, pinpointing external support as contingent on motivation and demonstrating the role of risk-taking in the pursuit of innovation.

The emerging perspectives of entrepreneurial ecosystems, bricolage and effectuation highlight the interaction between the entrepreneur and the surrounding community, and its potential for creative resource acquisition and utilization. However, empirical work on how this process actually unfolds remains scarce. This paper aims to study the interaction between the opportunity construction process and the development of resources in the surrounding ecosystem.

This paper is a qualitative analysis of the extreme case of Aalto Entrepreneurship Society (Aaltoes), a newly founded organization successfully promoting entrepreneurship within a university merger with virtually no resources, based on interviews of six key contributors and four stakeholder organizations.

The opportunity construction process both supported and was supported by two key resource generating mechanisms. Formulating and opportunistically reformulating the agenda for increasing potential synergy laid the groundwork for mutual benefit. Proactive concretization enhanced both initial resource allocation and sustaining input to the process through offering tangible instances of specific opportunities and feedback.

Although based on a single case study in a university setting, proactive concretization emerges as a promising direction for further investigations of the benefits and dynamics of entrepreneur–ecosystem interaction in the opportunity construction process.

Intentionally creating beneficial entrepreneur–ecosystem interaction and teaching proactive concretization becomes a key goal for educators of entrepreneurship.

The paper extends an understanding of creative resource generation and utilization in the opportunity construction process. The role of proactive concretization was emphasized in the interaction of the entrepreneur and the ecosystem, creating virtuous spirals of entrepreneurial activity.

If we are to better understand what it means to think “sustainably,” the entrepreneurship literature suggests that entrepreneurial cognition offers us two powerful tools. Human cognition operates with two nearly parallel systems for information processing, intentional and automatic. Entrepreneurial cognition has long focused on how entrepreneurial thinking and action are inherently intentional. Thus, intentions-based approaches are needed to understand how to encourage the identification of actionable sustainable opportunities. But first, however, we need to address key elements of our automatic processing, anchored on deep assumptions and beliefs. In short, if sustainable entrepreneurship is about addressing sustainable opportunities, then before we can take advantage of research into entrepreneurial intentions, we need a better understanding of how we enact our deep mental models of constructs such as “sustainable.”

This chapter sets forth how and why diary data analysis can help significantly advance inquiry into the intersubjective aspects of entrepreneurial opportunities. We start the chapter with a presentation of the sensemaking perspective for the study of intersubjectivity in entrepreneurship. Next, we address epistemological limitations of retrospective data collection methods and examine the relevance of real-time, prospective data, specifically diary data, for the study of intersubjective phenomena associated with entrepreneurial activity. Furthermore, we describe our experiences with application of this method to the study of entrepreneurial cognitive development in the context of longitudinal, diary data-based research on this topic. We also address limitations of the diary data collection method and propose future research avenues for studies on intersubjective dimensions of entrepreneurial agency, before concluding this chapter.

States that an organization that seeks to survive must keep identifying viable new opportunities. An organization that wishes to grow must do an even better job of identifying viable new opportunities. However, opportunities are in the eye of the beholder. Identifying opportunities does not mean “find” them, rather we construct or invent them. How do we encourage the identification of viable, credible opportunities? Maybe even more important is the converse: why do decision makers fail to see objectively viable opportunities?

If there is one thing that truly characterizes entrepreneurship and especially social entrepreneurship, it is the “engaged scholarship” at their very heart. That is, teaching, outreach/service and research are connected, often tightly. The purpose of this paper therefore is to discuss the evolution of social entrepreneurship and the lessons learned.

The paper reports on the results of a multi‐country survey dealing with social entrepreneurship.

It is found that a lot of maturing needs to be done in the area of social entrepreneurship work.

This paper provides real value to the literature by showing what is actually done in the teaching of social entrepreneurship.