RESPONSE: Nurturing entrepreneurial thinking

[entrepreneurship-phd at lists.uni-due.de]

From: Jalal Moosavi [mailto:jmoosavi at yahoo.com] 
Date: Tue 22 April 2008 16:59

Dear All.

Hi. I would like to share my idea with youwith hope you will let me to complete it. I think the starting point to assist people to think in an entrepreneurial way should be based on Mitchell's original conception of entrepreneurial expertise as comprising of three dimensions: arrangement, willingness, and ability. what I learn from this conception is the balance that entrepreneur needs to create between his motivations, abilities and environmental possibilities. his PhD thesis could be reviewed to get familiar with his idea on measuring these scripts and finding whether a certain client have these scripts.

I would like to add the concept of cognitive structure developed by cognition researchers and define it as overall structure of entrepreneurial scripts. thus one important dimension in nurturing entrepreneurial thinking would be increasing cognitive complexity of client both in differentiation and integrity. thus one dimension of nurturing entrepreneurial thinking is developing cognitive structure of people.

borrowing from cognitive research models differentiating between structure and process, the next step in assisting entrepreneurs should focus on how they actually use their cognitive structure in interpreting environmental clues. I have found Egon Brunswick's lens model suitable in dealing with this second dimension of entrepreneurial thinking. what I conclude is that one must have a cognitive complexity consistent with the peculiarities of actions during entrepreneurship process.he must also be able to use this structure efficiently in processing new information coming from environment. thus entrepreneurial thinking has two facets: structure and process. structure has two sub dimensions of cognitive differentiation and cognitive integrity. also cognitive process could be further divided into explorative and exploitative processing dimensions as conceptualized in cognitive research.

In practice I have used two theories and related methods in cognitive research to start working with my clients. the first one is repertory grid analysis which could be used to map cognitive structure of clients. the second theory is Egon Brunswik's probabilistic functionalism and related techniques in study of how efficiently people are using their entrepreneurial scripts.

based on the information you may get from clients on their cognitive complexity and cognitive processing efficiency, you may formulate your assisting strategy. you may use 4C/ID instructional design model developed by van Merriënboer and others to develop your assisting strategy into educational actions.

looking froward to hear from you.

Best 
Jalal Moosavi