2007/07/01 by Dimo Dimov · 391 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Psychology · #Entrepreneurship Studies and Influences #Innovation and Socioeconomic Development #Private Equity and Venture Capital #Intentionality #Action (physics) #Psychology #Context (archaeology) #Process (computing) #Affect (linguistics) #Domain (mathematical analysis) #Social psychology #Style (visual arts) #Cognitive psychology #Opportunity cost #Computer science #Epistemology #Communication #Economics #Microeconomics
paper · doi:10.1111/j.1540-6520.2007.00188.x
published in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice 31(4), 561-583 (SAGE Publishing)
openalex publication_date 2007/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Within the context of opportunity development as a learning process, this paper explores the intentionality that drives the early stages of this process, from the initial occurrence of an idea to its further exploration and elaboration by a potential entrepreneur. It establishes that the specific situations that induce opportunity insights also affect the roles that individuals’ prior knowledge and learning approaches play for the formation of opportunity intentions. The likelihood of acting on their initial opportunity insights depends not only on how much prior knowledge individuals have of the opportunity domain, but also on whether their learning style matches the situation at hand. The results from an experiment show that domain–specific knowledge enables action when there is a person–situation match and impedes it when such a match is lacking.