Clarke’s law is, famously, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Entrepreneurship is hardly advanced technology, but I think to those who don’t practice it, it can seem as dark an art as sorcery. An enigmatic practice of certain gifted people. When it works, there is something alchemical about it. A way for people to turn ideas into gold.
Researchers into entrepreneurship, and many others beside, have an interest in trying to demystify it and describe it as a process. Because once distilled into a process, entrepreneurship can be analysed, replicated and taught (perhaps even branded and sold). Repeated observation of entrepreneurial ventures has enabled researchers to document that process, but not so thoroughly as to illuminate all its mysteries.
Reading Baron and Shane’s Entrepreneurship: a process perspective has walked me through that process, but also highlighted its limitations. They point out that there is much debate about how much entrepreneurship is methodology and how much is psychology. Is it like a recipe which can be followed by anyone with access to the correct ingredients? Or is it something innate in certain people, more akin to individual talent – something you either have or haven’t got?
Certainly, entrepreneurship is a process which crosses disciplinary boundaries; it is both economic (in that it is about the exploitation of finite resources) and psychological. The stages of an entrepreneurial venture are clear enough to follow like steps in a manual: idea generation, opportunity recognition, resource gathering, decision making and so on. But although you can follow that process as if you’re assembling a model aeroplane, there’s no guarantee it will fly. Because entrepreneurship appears to need a human factor.
The key psychological element of the process is “entrepreneurial cognition,” a term which describes how entrepreneurs’ thought processes differ from non-entrepreneurs. It’s in the description of the elements of entrepreneurial cognition which aid entrepreneurs’ decision making (risk sensitivity, optimism, pattern recognition) that personal abilities and preferences become relevant. The relative importance of process to personal – of the macro world in which entrepreneurial opportunities exist to the micro world of how people behave entrepreneurially – is still unknown.
I think there’s a similarity here between entrepreneurship and creativity. Both are essentially processes which require an element of individual talent for full success. You could follow a step by step process on how to write a novel, for instance, and it may still be rubbish. Perhaps “creative cognition” exists in a similar way to entrepreneurial cognition.
Below, my graphical representation of the process of entrepreneurship, as divided along two theoretical concepts about its conception and implementation: the micro and the macro. Not a strict retelling of Baron & Shane, but more of a mind map drawn by me in an attempt to capture the various ideas about entrepreneurship as a process. (In particular, the positioning of resource gathering in the process is mine.)
Creative Business Leadership 