On the Recognition of Venturing Opportunities in Science and Technology

This paper seeks to understand the psychological mechanisms which support the recognition of science and technology-based opportunities for new ventures. Opportunity recognition is viewed as a critical skill in venturing activities, but there is doubt about the mechanisms involved. The entrepreneurship literature contains a tradition of seeing opportunity recognition as a less than conscious process, that starts with an “initial intuition,” and “involves a subconscious evaluation,” a view that suggests the psychological process of directed attention, where the direction for any given individual is a function of personal interests and experience. A small number of qualitative interviews at the University of Sheffield are first reported that support the finding that such a cognitive mechanism is present. Then a scale used to measure “attention to use” in a survey of 494 science and engineering students at four UK universities is presented, along with its correlation with venturing and applied technology self-efficacy. The conclusion addresses the implications of recognising directed attention as a major component of opportunity recognition. Entrepreneurial opportunity recognition and directed attention to use of technology This paper seeks to understand the psychological mechanisms which support entrepreneurial opportunity recognition. That recognition is treated here from the perspective of Kirzner’s (1979) entrepreneurial alertness, a perspective that calls attention to the unconscious processes of discovery. It begins with the proposition that a substantial fraction of opportunities recognised by nascent entrepreneurs are not conscious in the sense that they are not found through a process that is driven by rational search or even by the conscious focusing of one’s attention. A cognitive theory of unconscious recognition and discovery is considered that might then explain this phenomenon, based upon the proposition that individuals develop a directed attention through interest and experience to quite specific domains. A summary review of the opportunity recognition literature is offered focusing on the psychology of the recognition process that often precedes conscious search for an idea. The probe into the nature of the opportunity recognition process among a small number of mechanical engineering undergraduates at the University of Sheffield is then offered to provide a qualitative test of the source of ideas, leading to the conclusion that some unconscious process of screening and evaluating ideas must be at work. The next section offers a discussion of the theory of directed attention as a basis for considering what processes might be at play. The methods and results section then provides the findings from a survey of 494 second, third and fourth year engineering undergraduates at the