The role of intuition in entrepreneurial opportunity exploitation.

Abstract

Over the past two decades, a body of literature has emerged highlighting the important role of intuition in entrepreneurship. Intuition has been studied in relation to various phenomena including entrepreneurial alertness, experience and expertise, and opportunity identification. However, no research has been published to date on the extent to which individuals rely on intuition when exploiting opportunities. Consequently, little is known about how entrepreneurs make decisions regarding opportunity exploitation, which is a necessary step for business creation and growth. The aim of this study is to address this gap in the literature through the following research question: What is the role of intuition during opportunity exploitation decision-making? This study is guided by the dual-process Cognitive-Experiential Self-Theory, which states that human information processing takes place through the independent yet interactive systems of intuition and analysis, and posits that these should be studied together. Therefore, although the main focus is on intuition, the analytical mode of processing is also studied in this research. The data was gathered from 74 technology entrepreneurs using: a) An online survey that measured cognitive style (dispositional preference for intuition or analysis), business ownership experience, and other control variables; and b) A scenario-based think-aloud opportunity exploitation exercise. A strength of this multi-method approach is that it captured the actual use of intuition and analysis while controlling for dispositional preference, rather than relying exclusively on the latter. Negative binomial regressions revealed that intuition was a positive predictor, and analysis a negative predictor of the number of opportunities that participants decided they would exploit. This suggests that positive exploitation decisions are influenced primarily by intuition, while rejection decisions are more strongly shaped by analytical thinking. This study contributes to dual-process theory and the entrepreneurial cognition literature by shedding light on the dual cognitive mechanisms of intuition and analysis underlying decision-making in opportunity exploitation. It supports the widely held view that intuition plays a key role in entrepreneurship as, in addition to its various benefits as identified in previous research, intuition was found to facilitate opportunity exploitation, which is an essential stage of the entrepreneurship process.