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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.

This chapter first examines the role of attention in the garbage can model of decision making and compares it both to prior approaches in the Carnegie School tradition and the attention-based view of the firm. Both the garbage can model and the attention-based view rely on the same assumption, one that is rarely recognized nor understood – that organizational decision making is characterized by situated attention, where organizational participants vary across time and place in what they attend to. In the garbage can model, decision opportunities are the temporal contexts for situated attention; in the attention-based view, attention is situated in both time and place within the organization's communication channels. In the garbage can, situated attention is also shaped by the ecology of problems and opportunities competing for attention. The final part examines the determinants and consequences of tight versus loose coupling of channels in organizations and its effects on participants’ situated attention. Attention structures external to channels and the architecture of channel structures shape the degree of coupling found in organizations. In viewing coupling as a variable, the chapter suggests that a modified garbage can model, combined with an increased focus on situated attention, provides the foundations for a more general theory of nonroutine decision making.

Amidst the backlash against gay rights in the U.S., a rapidly expanding number of companies are instituting inclusive policies. While in 1990 no major corporations provided health insurance for the partners of lesbian and gay employees, by early 2004, over 200 companies on the Fortune 500 list (approximately 40%) had adopted domestic partner benefits. This study of Fortune 1000 corporations reveals that the majority of adopters instituted the policy change only after facing pressure from groups of lesbian, gay, and bisexual employees. Despite such remarkable success, scholars have yet to study the workplace movement, as it is typically called by activists. Combining social movement theory and new institutional approaches to organizational analysis, I provide an “institutional opportunity” framework to explain the rise and trajectory of the movement over the past 25 years. I discuss the patterned emergence and diffusion of gay employee networks among Fortune 1000 companies in relation to shifting opportunities and constraints in four main areas: the wider sociopolitical context, the broader gay and lesbian movement, the media, and the workplace. Next, using the same wide-angle lens, I explain the apparent decline in corporate organizing since 1995. My multimethod approach utilizes surveys of 94 companies with and without gay networks, intensive interviews with 69 networks and 10 corporate executives, 3 case studies, field data, and print and virtual media on gay-related workplace topics. By focusing on not simply political but also broader institutional opportunities, I provide a framework for understanding the emergence and development of movements that target institutions beyond the state.

The purpose of this study was to examine pathways towards, and the rationale behind internationalisation from the perspectives of micro firms' operators involved in the globally competitive wine industry. Moreover, drawing from entrepreneurial action theory, the study developed a theoretical framework to help understanding micro approaches and rationale for internationalisation.

Data were collected through interviews with 19 micro winery owners and managers operating in the Prosecco Superiore (Italy) and cava industry (Spain).

Aligned with entrepreneurial action theory, uncertainty in participants' environment, coupled with the associated need to diversify through exports, were predominant drivers of internationalisation. However, internationalisation also emerged through non-deliberate channels, including through growth of wine tourism and increasing foreign wine enthusiasts. Thus, while entrepreneurial action through deliberate means triggered a stronger focus on internationalisation, other passive interventions beyond the control or influence of micro firms, but rather emerge serendipitously, can similarly spur direct action.

The study demonstrated its originality and value in various ways, fundamentally, addressing three knowledge gaps, thereby contributing to practical and theoretical discourses with corresponding value, including managerially. First, it extended literature focussing on micro firms, which as compared to small and medium enterprise research is much more limited. Second, it provided a comparative component, which is much rarer in contemporary research discussing internationalisation amongst micro firms. Third, the study proposed a theoretical framework stemming from the chosen inductive approach, thus, addressing concerns regarding the lack of theoretical rigour or depth in internationalisation activities amongst micro firms.

Applications powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have become a crucial factor for success in modern sales organizations. This chapter investigates how Salesforce achieves scalable AI for businesses of all sizes and explores sales applications of AI and machine learning that are most common across industries. It is divided into three sections. The first section gives an introduction to AI and machine learning. The second section shows how data and automated machine learning models provide the foundation for AI applications and explains how Salesforce achieves scalable AI and machine learning for business applications. The third section demonstrates how AI applications impact the modern sales organization and the work of sales representatives. AI does not replace humans; it allows sales organizations to better engage with prospects and customers. Sales representatives using AI outperform their counterparts that rely purely on traditional methods.

Individual level innovation studies often assess only one dimension of innovative behavior. As such, they do not sufficiently capture the richness of the construct of individual innovation. Develops and tests a multi‐dimensional measure of individual innovative behavior. Identifies descriptions of 289 innovation related behaviors and codes these into a hypothesized factor structure consisting of the following five dimensions: opportunity exploration, generativity, formative investigation, championing, and application. Structural equation modeling used on a sample of 225 employees from nine different organizations delivered a relatively poor fit between the hypothesized factor structure and respondents’ job behaviors. However, a single factor measure based on items representing all five factors resulted in an alpha reliability of 0.95 thus supporting a multi‐dimensional conceptualization of innovative behavior in general. Discusses implications for future research.

We examine how subsidiaries of multinational companies communicate with headquarters about business opportunities they perceive in their local environment. Our aim is to provide in-depth insights into how communication is used to attract the attention of headquarters.

We study four communication processes of opportunities recognised by subsidiary managers in four different units within the same multinational corporation.

We find that communication is influenced by the subsidiaries’ perception of their relationship with headquarters. Importantly, we find that subsidiaries in emerging countries show different communication patterns than those in advanced markets. Our results further point out that multinationals from advanced countries face the challenge to respond to the increased salience of opportunities from emerging economies, while at the same time still working within existing communication patterns and structures that are not adapted to this new situation.

Our study presents communication processes within multinationals beyond the frequency of communication, including a variety of aspects of communication. Doing so, we are able to point out that open communication is not achieved with all subsidiaries, and what is worse, seems most of all to be challenged for subsidiaries in emerging markets, risking promising business opportunities in these markets.

This chapter seeks to understand the psychological mechanisms that 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 on the proposition that individuals develop a directed attention through interest and experience to quite specific domains.

Even if in a traditional perspective the discovery and the exploitation of opportunities are associated to the entrepreneur’s capabilities, a relational perspective is required to better analyze the phenomenon of starting up a new venture. The growing attention to interaction with the external environment has been emerging as a precondition of the entrepreneurial processes as it creates the knowledge and the experience necessary to perceive the opportunity. The entrepreneurial opportunities are created through joint acts with others through social relationships. Shifting the attention from social to business relationships, the main aim of this paper is to investigate the discovery and the exploitation of collective entrepreneurial opportunities in starting up new business. In particular, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of relational proximity in the entrepreneurial journey considered as an emergent process of transforming potentiality into actuality.

The paper applied a qualitative methodology (Dubois and Araujo, 2004) and a case study approach (Barrat et al., 2011). The case concerns the dyadic spin-off relationship between the innovative start up, ShapeMode (the generated firm), and the Milan FabLab (the generating firm) located in Lombardy Region (Italy).

The emerging of collective entrepreneurial opportunities could be analyzed at two levels: the first one concerns the dyadic spin-off relationship, while the second one is founded on the business relationships that the start-up can activate with the business partners of the generating firm. The collective entrepreneurial opportunities are positive influenced by jointness of the actors and their co-evolution, founded on the shared values and goals.

Although the case study approach allowed the researcher to gain detailed information about the spin-off relationship, this effort does not measure the performance outcomes of the relationships and actions that were taken to improve the competitiveness of the start-up. Future studies would benefit from a large-scale questionnaire given to the members of the start-up and to the actors of its Entrepreneurial Network, so to analyze all of its performance implications for the start-up and the network as a whole. In addition, it could be of interest for future research to investigate the effects of collective entrepreneurial opportunities in order to examine this topic more deeply.

From a managerial point of view, even if the growing number of start-ups has been associated to a temporary phenomenon, the development of new ventures is now consolidated. A new managerial approach is required to promote the birth and the growth of the start-ups. The development of a new venture requires to shift the attention from the collection of financial resources to the exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities generated by interconnected business relationships. In this way a relevant attention should be recognized to the new role of organizations that can be considered as facilitators of business relationships, such as the FabLab. This paper sheds light on the relevance of the strategic networking that sustains the generation of collective entrepreneurial opportunities. The networking involves actors that belong to different geographic area and different countries but that are focused on the same business dream related to the exploitation of potentialities of digital fabrication. The policymakers should recognize the role of the FabLab as facilitator of knowledge diffusion concerning digital fabrication.

The entrepreneurial opportunities such as the starting up of a new business and its evolution, are enacted, discovered and exploited through interconnected business relationships. In particular the main entrepreneurial opportunities are generated by the activation of business relationships with new business actors. Focusing on the dyadic spin-off relationship, the exploitation of collective entrepreneurial opportunities depends on the sharing of third actors. The business partners of the generating actor (FabLab) became business partners of the generated actor (start-up). The evolution of the generating firm (FabLab) influenced the birth and the evolution of the generated firms (start-up). The dyadic relationship allows the generated firm to discover entrepreneurial opportunities and to exploit them, accessing to the business partners of the generating firm. The effectiveness of the spin-off relationship sustains the replication of the model of new firm generation, that could benefit from the relationships of the two actors of the dyad. Moreover the strong relationships are founded on relational proximity that is characterized by the sharing of values, vision and business dreams.

Macro- and microorganizational perspectives on strategy processes are typically treated as distinct lines of inquiry. This paper proposes an attention-based theory (March & Olsen, 1976; Ocasio, 1997) of strategy formulation processes to bridge both perspectives. In particular, it links evolutionary perspectives on strategy (Burgelman, 1991, 2002) and strategic choice (Child, 1972) perspectives on organizational and strategic decision making (Bower, 1970; Carter, 1971; Cyert & March, 1963; Frederickson, 1986). Our treatment of the strategy process extends theory by viewing strategy processes as assemblages of tightly and loosely coupled networks of operational and governance channels (Allison & Zelikow, 1999; Ocasio, 1997), strategy formulation as a fluid and distributed process, and environmental, organizational level and individual level forces as consequential. Like Lovas and Ghoshal (2000), we view strategy formulation as a process of guided evolution. Unlike Lovas and Ghoshal who view strategic intent as the objective function that guides evolution, we view strategy formulation processes as more fragmented and contested, with multiple foci of attention, rather than an explicit objective function, and both top-down and bottoms-up processes capable of generating changes in the strategic direction of the firm.