Publication
Starting a new venture is arguably an exciting journey into previously unknown territories. Since entrepreneurs, through their economic activities, are central to social prosperity, academic research has a strong interest to understand who those entrepreneurs are and what they do. Much is yet unknown about how entrepreneurs think and what behaviors emerge from their thought processes. Consequently, in this dissertation I set out to explore and provide new insights on behavior, cognitive processes, and managerial practices that entrepreneurs employ to navigate the demands and complexities of the venturing process. The first paper puts the aspiring entrepreneur center stage. Starting a new venture is an intentional activity; however, not everyone who exhibits the wish to start a new venture actually does so. For a long time, the entrepreneurship research community has clung to the notion that intention is the single best predictor for action. Yet, empirical evidence from large-scale studies indicates that this view may not reflect reality. Significant time lags exist between the intent to found a venture and actual pursuit, and high dropout rates hint that additional elements are necessary beyond intent. Our current understanding of entrepreneurial intention largely fails to predict when and under which circumstances aspiring entrepreneurs will actually implement their intentions. Consequently, this research addresses the question of which amongst those who aspire to become an entrepreneur is more likely to execute their entrepreneurial intentions. In order to answer that question, the paper builds on fragmented and disparate work of personality, cognition, affect, and self-regulatory mechanisms and develops a theoretical model that helps explain individual-level factors that enable the budding entrepreneur to cross the intent-action-gap and persevere in the venturing process. Paper 2 takes as a starting point the belief that resources are essential to the success of firms. To the extent that those resources are fungible, i.e. can be amended to several different services and linked to different market applications, they are an important driver of value creation and the trajectory of new firms. In fact, recent research highlights that new firms derive performance benefits when identifying multiple opportunities prior to market entry. However, it remains hitherto understudied as to which factors play a role in this process of leveraging technological competences. We approach this topic by focusing on the identification of new technology-market- linkages through person-resource-interaction. While previous research has predominantly studied the impact of the person in terms of competencies and prior knowledge, this paper looks at the resource and examines how resource properties shape the human perception of opportunity spaces. Building on 24 in-depth case studies of different early-stage technologies from the labs of EPFL, this study provides detailed