Developing new opportunities, entrepreneurial skills and product/service creativity: a ‘Young Enterprise’ (YE) perspective

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this research is to investigate how Young Enterprise (YE) student entrepreneurs develop new product/service opportunities, learn decision-making skills and achieve a sense of entrepreneurial self-efficacy. From a national survey of YE participants in the Netherlands, entrepreneurial self-efficacy was found to partially mediate relationships between new opportunity recognition belief and two key product/service creativity characteristics, namely: (a) new product/service novelty and; (b) new product/service meaningfulness. The ability of YE entrepreneurs to re-scale their new venture strategies, and/or re-adapt products and services were also important real options (or strategic decision-making) moderators in a new social cognitive learning framework. This article contributes to a fresh understanding of the opportunity recognition belief and entrepreneurial decision skills literatures from a social cognitive theoretical perspective. This research also provides much needed empirical support for European YE policy-makers, demonstrating that team-based mini-enterprise education initiatives really do benefit entrepreneurial learners!

KEYWORDS:

• Young enterprise (YE)
• opportunity recognition belief
• entrepreneurial self-efficacy
• social cognitive theory
• real options

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Jong Ondernemen Foundation for helping us to carry out this survey-based research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 ‘Nascent’ in this context simply refers to YE entrepreneurs who are in the process of starting-up their new ventures; i.e. with a clear focus on developing new product/service opportunities in target markets for the purposes of business planning and growth.

2 The unit of analysis is at an individual level. In other words, each team member was surveyed as an individual YE participant/student within their organization. Therefore, at times we may refer to YE ‘team members’ and ‘individuals’ interchangeably.

3 Higher order ‘structurally aligned’ causal relationships (Grégoire, Corbett, and McMullen 2011, 416) are hypothesized based upon Grégoire et al.'s ‘proposition 1’, i.e. YE individuals compare and utilize new signals or information from their environment to help make sense of early opportunity recognition as part of meaningful comparative/pattern analysis.

4 This is caveated against social cognitive ‘reciprocal causation’ arguments made later in the article. In other words, perceptual ORB(s) unfold/change as time passes. For example, sensitivity to ‘good’ or ‘bad’ market news may positively or negatively affect rolling ORB(s) and levels of ESE (especially during the early stages of product/service development).

5 In addition (re: reciprocal causation), entrepreneurial competence enhances capability for enacting real options strategies, while exercising those strategies improves entrepreneurial competences.

6 Table 2 was generated, courtesy of Prof. J. Gaskin's website: http://statwiki.kolobkreations.com/wiki/Main_Page