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We offer a theoretical account of how two types of bricolage influence the entrepreneurial process. The first type involves social relationships or physical or functional assets, and thus pertains to an entrepreneurʼs external resources used in the instantiation of operations of a new venture. The second type pertains to an entrepreneurʼs internal resources‐experiences, credentials, knowledge, and certifications‐which the entrepreneur appropriates, assembles, modifies and deploys in the presentation of a narrative about the entrepreneurial process. We argue that both types of bricolage are essential to the success of a venturing attempt.

Entrepreneurs prioritise and act on purposeful endeavours instigated to actions by the visions of profits and benefits in the perceived opportunities. In the state of maximum entropy, with disorderliness and disequilibrium, entrepreneurs select the preferred pathway, through the profit-sensing mechanism, with the best probability of success to bet on. Therefore, this paper unpacks the forces at work in the mechanism to explain how entrepreneurs respond to opportunity and interpret the signals to coalesce into organised actions.

This research is primarily a conceptual paper on entrepreneurial action and the mechanism leading to that action. It refers to thermodynamic principles and biological cases to explain the forces at work using mostly analogical comparisons and similarities.

This paper aims to present an alternative theoretical scaffolding for entrepreneurship researchers to explore non-rational entrepreneurial behaviours and actions in uncertain, unstable and non-equilibrium environments, thereby creating new and competing hypotheses under the backdrop of adaptive evolution and thermodynamics phenomena.

The discussion featuring instinctively and naturally forming responses cannot fully explain the real entrepreneurial action as there is an element of free will and choices that are not discussed. While strategic choice and free-will shape decisions, they are preceded first by the attraction of the gradients and the biased motion in the direction of profit-attractant.

There remain essential links and issues not addressed in this “natural science”, constituting life science and physical science, oriented entrepreneurship research and exploration. Conceptualising opportunity-as-artefact and entrepreneurship as design, significant incidences of entrepreneurial actions can be explained by the presence of gradients stimulating entrepreneurial actions.

This viewpoint of information causality in opportunity-as-artefact casts a new look at the venerable question of what causes entrepreneurial actions. Shane and Venkataraman brought into focus this conversation, initiating the conceptual definition of opportunity. To have entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial opportunities must come first. Figuring the signals arising from these opportunities and cueing entrepreneurs to action is the main focus of this study.

Considering the “mechanism” at work and the thermodynamical forces at play, the entrepreneurial design process appears to hold considerable promise for future research development.

Acting entrepreneurially in nascent industries is a complex endeavor characterized by uncertainty and ambiguity. Nevertheless, entirely new industries do emerge, often as a direct result of entrepreneurial behavior. We extend and apply discovery and creation approaches to study entrepreneurial behavior during industry emergence by means of qualitative analysis of a film about the personal computer (PC) industry℉s formative years. We find that discovery and creation behavior are fundamentally interrelated and share a common element: bricolage. Moreover, ideological activism is a major component of entrepreneurial behavior in a new industry℉s formative years during both creation and discovery processes. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

This article proposes that sustainability represents a paradigmatic shift from traditional perspectives in entrepreneurship education. This “call to action” argues that it is imperative for entrepreneurship scholars and practitioners to add sustainability to academic curricula and consulting support activities. The evolutionary development of entrepreneurship from the traditional profit-oriented perspective to sustainable entrepreneurship is described. A case study of an academic institution, which has successfully incorporated sustainability principles into its curriculum, is provided.This article is among the first that details the importance of a paradigmatic shift because “business as usual” is no longer effective in the twenty-first century.

The paper introduces a new conceptualisation of entrepreneurship that promotes a broader perspective of the phenomenon. The purpose of the paper is to re-conceptualise the act of entrepreneurship so as to reduce it to the fundamental behaviours and processes.

The paper sets out the motivations for and challenges in establishing a broader definition of entrepreneurship. Following this, current approaches to defining entrepreneurship are reviewed. In light of these, a definition of entrepreneurship is offered that captures a new perspective in understanding entrepreneurship. A critique of the offered definition is offered with regards to promoting theory development, empirical research, quality predictions and a distinctive research domain.

The authors argue that a definition of entrepreneurship that is focussed on the development and validation of ideas provides a thought-provoking re-conceptualisation of entrepreneurship. Extant perspectives on entrepreneurship as business/organisation creation, uncertainty, innovation, value creation and opportunity recognition/creation are drawn on to demonstrate the applicability of the definition.

The pursuit for an encompassing definition of entrepreneurship has been both extensive and earnest, which has inadvertently resulted in a sizable pool of definitions. The authors offer a re-conceptualisation of entrepreneurship with the intent to provide a broad yet coherent definition that encompasses all acts of entrepreneurship. A benefit of this conceptualisation is the establishment of the endpoint of the entrepreneurship process that delineates it from the domain of management.

This empirical study examined links between entrepreneurial personality traits and perception of new venture opportunity in a sample of 207 respondents. Four entrepreneurial personality traits were included to predict respondents℉ perception of new venture opportunity. They are (1) achievement motivation, (2) locus of control, (3) risk propensity, and (4) proactivity.The results of multiple regression analysis show that three of the four entrepreneurial personality traits‐locus of control, risk propensity, and proactivity‐related significantly to perception of new venture opportunity in expected directions. Among the three personality traits, proactivity was found to have the strongest influence over entrepreneurial perception. No significant relationship was found between achievement motivation and perception of new venture opportunity. Among six control variables, only work experience was found to influence perception of new venture opportunity. This study explored links between entrepreneurial personalities and cognition and its results suggest that a combination of trait and cognition approaches contributes to a better understanding of entrepreneurial decision-making process. Both theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

Despite the increasing popularity of entrepreneurship among students in colleges and university, there is a surprising scarcity of theoretical or empirical research on this topic. In this article, we define the concept of student entrepreneurship, delineate its domain, and demarcate its boundaries. We propose a preliminary typology of student entrepreneurship rooted in the works of three leading economists from the Austrian School of Economics: Joseph Schumpeter, Israel Kirzner, and Ludwig Lachmann. We also identify and discuss important challenges associated with the practice of student entrepreneurship. The article concludes by advancing a future research agenda for the study of student entrepreneurship.

This study aims to deepen the authors’ understanding of how identity influences opportunity perception in non-profit organizations. The authors expand to the discussion about opportunity perception by including the concepts of organizational identity, collective entrepreneurial cognition, co-creation and storytelling.

The study reports on a qualitative analysis of interviews, observations, reflections and other material produced during a European Union-financed project called FöreningsKICK. All in all, 35 workshops and lectures on how to develop associations have been held for 345 participants, representing 120 associations.

A collective identity is important because it influences how opportunities are perceived. A weak team spirit and a weak identity may even lead to situations where member choose to ignore good opportunities because they feel that pursuing the ideas would result in too much work for them personally. Contrariwise, a strong collective identity fosters an atmosphere of trust, which makes the members more willing to recognize and pursue opportunities.

This is a case study in a limited geographical area. To ensure generalizability, more research is needed.

The authors’ model provides a good opportunity to point out strategic and communicational shortcomings in organizations. When these are resolved, the result is a stronger organizational identity and new opportunities.

This study bridges a research gap by shifting focus of the entrepreneurial cognition research from an individual perspective to a collective perspective.

The purpose of this article is to explore how agency is distributed between human actors and nonhuman elements in entrepreneurship.

It is based on an inductive longitudinal case study of a garden in a rural community in northern Sweden. The methodology includes an ethnography of the garden, spanning the course of 16 years, and a careful investigation of the entrepreneurial processes contained within it.

This article identifies and describes different practices to explain how agency is distributed between human actors and nonhuman elements in the garden's context. Three different practices were identified and discussed, namely “calling”, “resisting”, and “provoking”.

Agency/structure constitutes a longstanding conundrum in entrepreneurship and context. This study contributes to the on-going debate on context in entrepreneurship, and introduces a posthumanist perspective—particularly that of distributed agency—to theorising in entrepreneurship. Rather than focussing on a human (hero)-driven change process, induced through the exploitation of material objects, this novel perspective views entrepreneurship as both a human and a nonhuman venture, occurring through interactions located in particular places and times. Coming from the agency/structure dichotomy, this article reaches out for elements traditionally established on the structure side, distributing them to the agency side of the dichotomy. As such, it contributes to an understanding of the agency of nonhuman elements, and how they direct entrepreneurship in context. This theoretical development prepares entrepreneurship theories to be better able to engage with nonhuman elements and provides example solutions for the ongoing climate crisis.