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Despite the extensive research on the determinants and consequences of firm growth, research focusing on how the actual process unfolds is still evolving. An important part of firm growth process research is entrepreneurial cognition. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the relationship between entrepreneurial cognition and firm growth intentions. Specifically, we propose a theoretical model of entrepreneurial cognitive interpretation and categorization of market information as it relates to firm growth intentions. Drawing from the strategic cognition literature in general and strategic issue interpretation literature in particular, we propose that entrepreneurs’ interpretation of market information as opportunity or threat, gain or loss, and controllable or uncontrollable influences their firm growth intentions. Furthermore, our theoretical model discusses the condition under which favorable interpretation of market information leads to higher growth intentions by incorporating insights from the Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) construct. This chapter extends our understanding of firm growth processes by highlighting the important role cognitive interpretation and categorization play in facilitating or hindering entrepreneurial firm growth.

The pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunities is not always successful. On the one hand, entrepreneurial failure offers an invaluable opportunity for entrepreneurs to learn about their ventures and themselves. On the other hand, entrepreneurial failure is associated with substantial financial, psychological, and social costs. When entrepreneurs fail to learn from failure, the potential value of this experience is not fully utilized and these costs will have been incurred in vain. In this chapter, the authors investigate how the stigma of failure exacerbates the various costs of failure, thereby making learning from failure much more difficult. The authors combine an analysis of interviews of 20 entrepreneurs (who had, at the time of interview, experienced failure) with an examination of archival data reflecting the legal and cultural environment around their ventures. The authors find that stigma worsens the entrepreneurs’ experience of failure, hinders their transformation of failure experience, and eventually prevents them from utilizing the lessons learnt from failure in their future entrepreneurial activities. The authors discuss the implications of the findings for the entrepreneurship research and economic policies.

Upcycling was introduced in The Archers by Fallon Rogers, who created a business from selling furniture she had upcycled. The author cites other examples from Archers episodes: Bert Fry’s egg mobile was originally an old caravan. Eddie Grundy built Lynda Snell’s shepherd’s hut from farmyard scrap. Josh Archer expanded his online farm equipment sales to include old items refurbished and sold for profit. Definitions of upcycling imply that the original item has become worthless. The author, however, includes examples of nostalgic value placed on relics of a bygone age and suggests a dichotomy between the values of older versus younger Ambridge residents. Upcycling can also be viewed in a metaphorical sense: Lilian Bellamy, for example, regularly upcycled herself with cosmetic assistance. The most sinister example is that of Rob Titchener, who used coercive control to upcycle Helen (then) Titchener into the image he wanted. The author concludes that while motives may take several forms, it is Fallon Rogers who consistently uses both creativity and business sense in her upcycling endeavours.

Interest in academic entrepreneurship is gaining attention as pressure on academic institutions to be more entrepreneurial increases. To date, emphasis has been on the transfer and commercialisation of research with little discussion focused on the entrepreneurial potential of university teaching. Drawing on Schumpeter’s theory of entrepreneurship, in particular the combining and recombining of resources and the concept of resistance, we provide an illustrative case study of one entrepreneurial academic venture that emerged from the teaching activities of a university. We examine how this venture, the ICEHOUSE, has evolved and been sustained despite pressure from competing logics from its partnering institutions. We argue that multiple and competing logics by various stakeholder groups led to ‘resistive tension’ which has supported the growth of the organisation.

Studies of entrepreneurial action often distinguish between different phases such as opportunity identification, evaluation, and exploitation. Yet, the richness of past contributions masks the absence of an integral framework to organize, in a theoretically consistent ensemble, the different kinds of cognitive processes that underpin entrepreneurial action. In this chapter, we draw from research on human action and cognition to offer an integrative model of the cognitive processes that foster entrepreneurial action. By presenting a more specific articulation of when, how, and why different cognitive processes operate, we provide theorists and empiricists with a more complete picture of how entrepreneurs’ thinking evolves from the emergence of an opportunity idea to the initiation of concrete entrepreneurial acts. In addition, our framework draws attention to cognitive inflection points that entrepreneurs must navigate in their journey toward entrepreneurship. By explicitly locating these inflection points and specifying the changes in mental processing that occurs at each point, we highlight that for entrepreneurial action to ensue, entrepreneurs must shift from one type of cognitive processing to another. Along this line, our model draws attention to the entire set of cognitive “skills” entrepreneurs must master for successful completion of each phase and successful transitions between phases.

Judgments and decision are central to entrepreneurship, but capturing them empirically is challenging. Shepherd and Zacharakis (1997) addressed this challenge by identifying metric conjoint analysis as an experimental method capable of capturing the decision policies of actors engaged in entrepreneurial task, creating a “window of opportunity” for entrepreneurship research. On the twentieth anniversary of this chapter, the authors reflect on the impact the ideas had on their own work and careers, while, at the same time, address the possibility that the “typical” conjoint study may have reached the end. From this platform, the authors identify unknown attributes, interactive effects, rich media, mixed methods, and sophisticated data analysis as potential pathways by which conjoint analysis can continue to advance understanding of entrepreneurship. Their conclusion is that when coupled with impactful research questions, innovative uses of conjoint analysis have an important role to play in the future of entrepreneurship research. Hence, the authors believe that Dean A. Shepherd’s and Zach Zacharakis’s bold effort will continue as a quintessential resource for those researchers who wish to tap the mind of entrepreneurs, investors, and other key actors as they traverse the journey of business venturing.

Unlike other populations, entrepreneurs may be unable to fully escape from job-related stress due to their financial and/or psychological connection to their ventures. The authors argue that stress is a universal, intangible variable that profoundly influences the entrepreneurial process. In the present review, the authors critically synthesize past literature to evaluate the substantive body of research on stress in entrepreneurship and assess the impact of stress on individuals’ well-being. The authors find that entrepreneurial stress stems from role conflict or overload, issues related to business operations, and concerns from life outside the venture. Further, stress may result in changes to personal satisfaction and psychological well-being, contingent upon an individual’s stress tolerance, coping strategies, or recovery practices. The entrepreneurial process, from creation to exit, is comprised of several transition periods, all of which are uniquely stressful. The authors explore the implications of our findings by discussing stressors that may manifest during each stage of the entrepreneurial process. Therefore, the authors respond to calls for more dynamic investigation of entrepreneurial stress while also highlighting the need for more research into stressors associated with specific entrepreneurial activities.

This study reports on the effect of demand variation on the optimal location of road-pricing cordons. The optimal road-pricing cordon, in this study, aims to maximise the social welfare function. This optimisation program is categorised as Bi-level optimisation programming which is a NP hard problem. The paper first describes the method developed to solve the optimal toll problem for a given set of chargeable links. The tests were carried out with a small toy network and a larger scale network. For the small network, four single user class demand characteristics were varied individually; these were the elasticity of trip generation with respect to increases in travel cost, value of travel time, volume of traffic, and traffic distribution pattern. For the larger scale network, only elasticity, value of time, and trip volume were tested. The results of the larger scale network are also analysed by including the cost per toll point. The tests with the larger scale network were modified so that the constraint of uniform charge is applied. The results showed that demand variation could influence the best location of toll points. This finding raises the question of whether the implementation of the same cordon all day in an urban traffic network is the optimal approach under the existence of demand variations by time of day, and also whether the evaluation process of the cordon location should consider the effect of different time periods together.