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1. Introduction引言
企业家精神是由法国的经济学家 巴蒂斯特在1800年首先提出来的，主要是指企业家做经济资源从低到高的效率上的一个概念。企业家“的企业精神”是一种特殊的技能（包括精神和技巧）。或者说，“企业家精神”指企业家组织的表达了企业综合能力的建设和管理，它是生产的一个重要而特殊的无形因素。例如，伟大的企业家，索尼创始人盛田昭夫和井深大，他们创造了最伟大的“产品”不是一个录音机，不是彩色显像管，而是索尼和一切它代表索尼的品牌的东西。
The concept of "entrepreneurs" by the French economist jean - batiste is put forward for the first time in 1800. I.e., the entrepreneurs make the efficiency of economic resources from low to high; Entrepreneurs "entrepreneurial spirit" is a special skill set (including spirit and skill). Or, "entrepreneurship" refers to entrepreneurs organization building and management of the enterprise comprehensive ability of expression, it is an important and special intangible factors of production. For example, the great entrepreneurs, SONY founder akio morita and well depth is big, they created the greatest "product" is not a tape recorder, bars is not the color picture tube, but SONY and everything it stands for; Walter? Disney's greatest creation is Pinocchio, nor "Snow White", not even to Disneyland, but walter? The Walt Disney company and its extraordinary ability to make the audience happy; Sam? Walton's greatest creation instead of persistence "everyday parity" wal-mart - one can retail, to bring into action in the best way of organization. Peter drucker, inherit and carry forward the schumpeter's point of view. He put forward the main is innovation, entrepreneurial spirit to equate the entrepreneurial leadership and management, think "is the core content of enterprise management, entrepreneurs risk-taking in terms of economy, enterprise working group is entrepreneurs".
世界著名的管理咨询公司埃森哲在26个国家和地区有数十万企业。企业领导者的79％的人认为创业精神对企业的成功非常重要。世界上最大的技术咨询公司埃森哲的报告还指出，在整个世界的所有企业中，创业的高级管理人员是企业的心脏之所在。
The world famous management consulting firm accenture, in 26 countries and regions with hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs. 79% of business leaders believe that entrepreneurship is important for the success of the enterprise. The world's largest technology consulting firm Accenture report also notes that a senior executive at heart in the whole world, entrepreneurship is healthy longevity genes and acupuncture point. Is entrepreneurship has created after world war ii, Japan's economic miracle, triggered the rise of more than 20 years American new economy. So, what is the real entrepreneur spirit? Candy and knight two economists, entrepreneurship and risk or uncertainty. No risk and risk of energy, and is not likely to become entrepreneurs. Enterprise innovation risk is binary, either success or failure, can only hedge cannot trade, entrepreneurs have no other third way. 3 m company in the United States there is a very valuable slogan: "in order to find the prince, you must, and countless kiss a frog". "Kissing a frog" often means that risk and failure, but "if you don't want to make mistakes, so don't do anything". Similarly, founded in silicon valley in 1939 HP, founded in 1946 in Tokyo, Japan SONY, founded in Taiwan in 1976, Acer, respectively in Beijing, China in 1984, Qingdao set up many enterprises such as lenovo and haier, although these founders of growth environment, the background and business chance each are not identical, but without exception are in conditions of extremely mature and under the condition of the external environment is extremely clear, they and the first to eat crab. Intel CEO grove famously said that "only the paranoid survive". This means that the following Moore's law in the information age, only unremitting innovation, continuously to KuaFuZhuiRi clinging, maintain castle peak does not relax, just may be a shoo-in. In times of economic crisis, the capitalists can vote with their feet, and quits the enterprise to sell shares, laborer can also withdrew from the business, but it is the only person who can't quit enterprise entrepreneurs. Is the so-called "perseverance, stone can be used; cheese, instead of, don't fold" deadwood. "In the 1980 s, nokia in mobile communications, but by the Finnish severe economic crisis in the early 90 s, it is not immune to nokia, the company stock market value has shrunk by 50%. In the survival crisis, companies rather than retreat, instead opted to sell other industries, concentrate all company resources, specializing in mobile communication. Tenacity nokia succeeded, nokia mobile phones in the world market share has reached 35%.
This essay aim to critically investigate the important cognitive and behavioural aspects of the entrepreneurial mindset in order to determine its distinctive features and the ways in which it distinguishes entrepreneurs from other individuals. Entrepreneurship has been extensively studied by management and behavioural experts and a distinct body of work has developed on the subject (Barringer & Ireland, 2010). Lazear, (2004), provides a description of an entrepreneur as a person who starts a fresh venture. This is a truly wide definition and equates, to my mind, a person who starts a new dry cleaning shop or a restaurant with Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com and Steve Jobs of Apple.
Whilst such an assumption does nevertheless contain an element of truth, it shows that it is difficult to generalise conclusions on entrepreneurship because of the range of entrepreneurial activity and the diverse types of entrepreneurs (Barringer & Ireland, 2010). Research on entrepreneurship, among other things, attempts to address the reasons for development of entrepreneurship (Barringer & Ireland, 2010). Such research addresses issues like (a) the reasons behind the engagement in entrepreneurial activity by certain people, whilst others who are equally talented and dynamic do not do so, and again, (b) the reasons for the perception of entrepreneurial opportunities by some, although others are unable to do so (Brockhaus & Horwitz, 1986).
I have attempted to answer these questions through the application of behavioural and cognitive theories. This essay critically analyses these two theories on the development of the entrepreneurial mindset. I have tried to apply entrepreneurial theory to the case of Jeff Bezos, in order to test the extent to which various aspects of cognitive and behavioural theories validate and explain the emergence and growth of Amazon.com, the legendary company he founded in 1994.
2. Behavioural Theories行为理论
Behavioural theories have been applied to psychologists and behavioural specialists to explain leadership, but, in recent years also being used to explain entrepreneurial activity. The behavioural theory is closely associated with the traits theory and essentially makes the point that entrepreneurs have some particular traits and characteristics that separate them from others. Timmons, et al, (1977), identified 14 significant behavioural characteristics of owners of enterprises, namely (1) self confidence, (2) energy and drive, (3) personal responsibility and initiative, (4) clear goal setting, (5) internal locus of control, (6) ambiguity tolerance, (7) absence of fear of failure, (8) ability to take risks, (9) constant use of feedback, (10) pragmatic approach to solving of problems, (11) self imposition of standards, (12) the use of money as a measure and not just an end, (13) self imposed standards and (14) willingness to use resources.
Subsequent research studies on behavioural and personality differences have found that entrepreneurs share a number of personality traits with business executives and that it is difficult to differentiate entrepreneurs from successful business executives on the basis of psychological and behavioural traits (Brockhouse & Horwitz, 1986).
Whilst the results of such research appear to indicate the existence of little difference between entrepreneurs and others, research by Dyer, et al, (2008) reveals that truly innovative entrepreneurs differ from others in their methods of acquiring information in four behavioural areas namely, questioning, observing, experimenting and idea networking. Their research concludes that entrepreneurs ask questions that challenge the existing state of things, spend time on intensely examining the world around them in their search for new ideas, constantly experiment by way of exploring their environment them with the intention of testing their hypotheses, and bounce their ideas of networks of individuals with different perspectives and behaviours.
The study of Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, reveals that Bezos determined in 1994 that the web was expanding at more than 2000% a year. He thereafter quit a good Wall Street job to start investigating the ways in which he could achieve benefits from such phenomenal online growth. He first developed an online book exchange service that allowed people to exchange used and read books, and by doing so established a network of book lovers from whom he got ideas about their needs for books (Brandt, 2011).Whilst the behavioural theory has until not until now been truly supported by empirical observation, the history of Bezos does provide some empirical evidence on the logicality of the assertions made by Dyler and his associates. #p#分页标题#e#
3. Cognitive Theory认知理论
Although empirical support for the existence of behavioural differences between entrepreneurs and others appears to be scarce, considerable empirical evidence is emerging for the existence of cognitive differences between these two sets of people (Gustavsson, 2004). Some of the particular areas that have been taken up for such research include heuristic logic, perceived connections and alertness, entrepreneurial expertise, effectuation, and cognitive biases (Gustavsson, 2004).
Research on cognitive differences finds that the entrepreneurial mindset is strongly associated with application of heuristics and individual beliefs for the making of decisions (Palich & Bagby, 1995). Heuristics stand for simplifying strategies used by individuals for making strategic decisions, more so in challenging and complex situations, where the available information is furthermore less than adequate. Research by Busenitz and Barney (1997) reveals that entrepreneurs rely upon heuristic processes for decision making significantly more than business managers. My study reveals that cognition does not appear to be homogeneous across people, with there being a diverse variety of cognitive strategies, styles, and processes (Palich & Bagby, 1995).
Considerable variation similarly exists across entrepreneurs with respect to their dependence upon heuristics. The degree to which entrepreneurs depend upon heuristic thinking, also termed as entrepreneurial cognition, is found to be shaped by the extent and nature of their experience (McGrath & MacMillan, 2000). Such experience provides entrepreneurs with appropriate frameworks for processing information and decreases the load of information processing, thereby facilitating experienced entrepreneurs to focus on new or unique data.
It state that the dominant logic of entrepreneurs stem from their stock of experience, Reuber and Fischer, (1999), state that dominant logic is a type of information funnel that facilitates the filtering of the entrepreneur’s attention. It is akin to entrepreneurial cognition and forms an important element of entrepreneur associated human capital. Entrepreneurial cognition can help in identification of fresh insights with regard to the environment and to the chances of spotting and exploiting of brief opportunity windows.
New entrepreneurs, on the other hand, without the help of such frameworks can be overwhelmed by a surfeit of information and may not know how to make good use of such information (Sadler-Smith & Badger, 1998). Such findings suggest that experienced entrepreneurs may possibly display cognitive features that diverge from those of new and inexperienced entrepreneurs (Sadler-Smith & Badger, 1998).
Perceived Connections and Alertness 连接感知和警觉性
Research on entrepreneurship has during the last two decades focused increasingly on the issue of some people being particularly alert to new opportunities and capable of developing new ideas (Miller, 2007). The ability to perceive and interpret information and to thereafter arrive at distinctive conclusions and inferences about possible entrepreneurial opportunities appear to involve distinct mental processes (Miller, 2007).
Alertness concerns attentiveness about new opportunities and implies distinctive reasoning and thinking processes. Empirical research on the subject is however limited and further research is required to produce valid empirical findings (Miller, 2007). Gaglio and Cats (2001), state that alertness is a reasonable, relevant and testable feature of the cognitive dynamics that help in opportunity identification. It has also been argued that some people possess cognitive frameworks that facilitate the development of relationships between changes in environment, market trends and marketplace niches. Such frameworks help the occurrence of jumps in logic that assist the recognition of new opportunities (Gaglio & Katz, 2001).
Entrepreneurial Expertise创业专业知识
Research on differences in decision making processes between entrepreneurs and others has also focused upon the idea that entrepreneurs develop specific knowledge structures and are capable of processing information differently from others (Krueger, 1993). Entrepreneurs, in other words, are able to change, store, recover and utilise information differently from others. It appears that entrepreneurs have expertise in their entrepreneurial domains and can acquire it through specific practice (Krueger, 1993). There also appears to be growing evidence that cognition, by way of expert scripts, is related to decision making in entrepreneurship despite the presence of boundaries to rationality (Krueger, 1993).
Effectuation 影响
The process of decision making under uncertainty by and large starts with the determination of the desired result or the chances of the occurrence of such results, followed by the determination of the best possible means for accomplishing such outcomes. Such rationality, which is inherently causal in nature, characteristically concerns the examination and assessment of several alternatives, followed by the determination and selection of the most advantageous choice. Entrepreneurs, considered from such perspectives, are felt to be agents of change who are adept at recognising and taking advantage of opportunities that are accessible to them inside the economic systems in which they participate.
The effectuation associated perspective is distinct from the causation related entrepreneurial process, because it adopts a set of tools or means as a given fact, and then focuses on the selection of the best amongst the diverse effects that can be developed with the concerned set of tools or means (McMullen & Shepherd, 2006). The effectuation approach essentially suggests that both thinking and action move forward together for the creation of one of different likely outcomes (McMullen & Shepherd, 2006). It assumes the future to be unpredictable, as well as the fact that entrepreneurs can develop, control, and manage a section of it, to create value through the application of the set of tools and means that are available to them (McMullen & Shepherd, 2006).
Sarasvathy (2001) states that entrepreneurs can, through effectuation, utilise the resources available to them to influence and moderate the future, without being compelled to predict it. Effectuation, in other words, stands for a different type of expertise, wherein it is assumed that enterprises will go to develop on the lines of the expertise, means, or resources which are the unique elements of the personal capital of entrepreneurs (Sarasvathy, 2001).
The application of diverse elements of cognition theory to the case of Jeff Bezos and his development of Amazon.com leads to some interesting conclusions. Bezos found that people who used books often did not know what to do with them after they had finished reading them. This led him to create a website that helped such people to come online, meet others and sell books to each other and develop the base for his future enterprise. His actions in this respect appear to be supportive of the cognitive theory on alertness and perceived connections.
Amazon went on to create value for users by (a) enabling them to access it online without any additional costs and from the comfort of their homes, (b) providing progressively wider services, and (c) progressive automation for reduction of costs, which benefited both the customers and the company. These actions indicate the use of heuristic logic, effectuation, and entrepreneurial expertise.
4.Conclusions 结论
I have attempted to investigate important behavioural and cognitive aspects of the entrepreneurial mindset in order to determine the extent to which it differs from those of others.
Entrepreneurs have for long been considered to be oddballs and different from other people; they are perceived to be independent, incapable of working under the direction of other people, hardworking, dynamic, receptive to new ideas, willing to take risks and engaged in the pursuit of the creation of value for both personal and social benefit. With research studies proving that the overwhelming majority of entrepreneurial ventures fail, the preoccupation of a very small segment of people with the pursuit of new ventures in the face of overwhelming odds and challenges does indicate that such individuals have different mindsets and think differently from others.
I have examined the premises of behavioural and cognitive theory in explaining and validating such differences. Whilst the behavioural theory differentiates these two sets of people through personality, psychological and behavioural features, there is little empirical support for its assumptions and the theory appears to be too general for arriving at valid conclusions. The cognitive theory focuses upon the differences in the mindsets of these sets of people, with specific regard to heuristic logic, perceived connections, expertise and effectuation.
It does appear from cognitive research on the subject that some differences do exist between the mental thinking of entrepreneurs and others with regard to approaches towards analysis of environment, deciphering of patterns, and effectuation processes. The findings of my study support the inferences and conclusions of cognitive theory with regard to the distinctiveness of the entrepreneurial mindset, with especial regard to its approach towards heuristic logic, environmental alertness, perceived connections and effectuation. #p#分页标题#e#
Word Count: 2336 , not including reference.
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