Bisociation, Discovery, and the Role of Entrepreneurial Action.

The article looks focuses on the entrepreneurship and new business enterprises. This chapter examines the processes by which entrepreneurial actions come about, as well as how and why they vary in their market effect. This focus is important for at least two reasons. First, we contend that entrepreneurial actions are a fundamental behavior of firms by which they move into new markets, seize new customers, introduce new resources, and/or combine markets, customers, and resources in new ways. As such, the study of entrepreneurial action may advance our understanding of how firms build and develop new competitive advantages and earn superior profits. We define entrepreneurial actions as any newly fashioned behavior by which firms exploit opportunities others have not noticed or exploited. The defining characteristic of entrepreneurial action is "newness" Entrepreneurial actions are original along at least one of the following four dimensions: they entail new resources, new customers, new markets, and/or new combinations of existing resources, customers, and markets. Treating these actions as a variable, our goal is to predict why firms diverge in their entrepreneurial behavior.