ARTICULATING THE INTUITIVE: MECHANISMS FOR ENTREPRENEURS TO COMMUNICATE OPPORTUNITY EVALUATION DECISION POLICIES

Abstract

Ironically in the development of expertise, as expertise increases, an individual's ability to communicate the knowledge associated with that expertise decreases. This lack of transferability can be beneficial (the knowledge is inimitable by competitors), but it can also be detrimental (the knowledge is not usable by colleagues and other stakeholders). These differences likely arise from different types of causal ambiguity. Ambiguity about the attributes of a specific entrepreneurial opportunity represents a barrier to the transferability of knowledge to competitors (beneficial), while ambiguity about the relationship between a specific opportunity and value creation represents a barrier to the transferability of knowledge to stakeholders (detrimental). To reduce specific opportunity/value creation relationship ambiguity, I focus in this research on mechanisms thought to enhance entrepreneurial decision makers' decision-policy consciousness in opportunity evaluation decisions. In a field experiment, I capture the opportunity evaluation decisions of 127 entrepreneurial decision makers in high potential technology ventures, and introduce a series of experimental manipulations hypothesized to increase the decision-policy consciousness of these individuals. The findings suggest that firm founders have lower decision-policy consciousness than non-firm founders; that codification increases decision-policy consciousness; that in increasing decision-policy consciousness, codification is more efficacious for founders than non-founders; that opportunity desirability, feasibility and environment play a significant role in opportunity evaluation; and that as a result of specific individual cognitive factors, systematic differences exist across opportunity evaluation decision policies. In addition to the practical implications of these results for new venture founding, they also contribute to both the entrepreneurial cognition literature and the strategic capabilities literature.