Entrepreneurs evaluate opportunities under conditions of uncertainty; they make judgments. In order to understand these evaluations, I develop an analogical model that represents an entrepreneurial opportunity in the mind of an individual. The model proposes that an opportunity is an analogical knowledge transfer from a source business domain to a target business domain. According to the model, the cognitive distance between the domains influences the opportunity evaluation. Additionally, the inspiration behind the analogy construction influences the opportunity evaluation. The empirical design employs a hypothetical scenario experiment and the results show that the two analogical properties matter for evaluation.
© 2017 International Council for Small Business.
Author Posting. © International Council for Small Business, 2017. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Wiley for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version will be published in Journal of Small Business Management. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/%28ISSN%291540-627X.