The Construct of Entrepreneurial Alertness

Abstract

This chapter is divided into three sections. In the first section, five streams of research on entrepreneurial opportunity formation are reviewed to see how knowledge and cognitive and behavioral factors are conceptualized to describe both the breaking of the existing means–ends framework and the construction of a new means–ends framework. In a subsequent section, a reconceptualization of the construct based on the review is given, and several key points are clarified. At last, it is proposed that a framework of entrepreneurial alertness contains four related processes of juxtaposing, unlearning, prospecting, and embellishing that occur at the individual level, and each of these four dimensions is delineated.