Entrepreneurial cognition and the quality of new venture ideas: An experimental approach to comparing future-oriented cognitive processes

Arjan Frederiks, Basil G. Englis, Michel L. Ehrenhard and Aard J. Groen

Journal of Business Venturing, 2019, vol. 34, issue 2, 327-347

Abstract: In the research reported here, we compared how future-oriented cognitive processes underpin differences in the quality of new venture ideas (NVIs) generated by respondents. We primed the use of future-oriented cognitive processes in two experiments. The first experiment shows that prospective thinking leads to NVIs of higher quality in comparison to counterfactual thinking, perspective taking and a control group. The second experiment shows that prospective thinking and perspective taking result in NVIs of higher quality compared to counterfactual thinking and the control group. We also find that prior knowledge of technology strengthens these effects. Post-hoc analyses show that these effects are present when respondents are prompted to generate NVIs, but not when they spontaneously generate NVIs, and that respondents with more prior business experience are more likely to spontaneously generate NVIs. Finally, we discuss contributions our research makes to the literature on entrepreneurial cognition and opportunity recognition, and to practice.

Keywords: Future-oriented cognition; New venture idea; Experimental study; Prospective thinking; Counterfactual thinking; Perspective taking (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (30)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0883902617302227
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbvent:v:34:y:2019:i:2:p:327-347

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusvent.2018.05.007

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Venturing is currently edited by S. Venkataraman

More articles in Journal of Business Venturing from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().