Keywords

Introduction

Within recent years we have witnessed an explosion in effort to answer two basic questions about the field of entrepreneurship. These include “where are we now?” and “where do we need to go?” For decades after it became a division of the Academy of Management in 1986, academics working in the field of entrepreneurship have been concerned about theory development , the legitimacy of the discipline and thus the appreciated value of their research and teaching efforts (e.g. Amit et al. 1993; Low and MacMillan 1988; Shane and Venkataraman 2000). Several recent reviews analyze entrepreneurship publication content to draw conclusions about trends in research foci over time and the status of the field in the present. These reviews tend to conclude that the field has in fact gained legitimacy . This is in part because more sophisticated research methods reveal that its boundaries have become better defined by a unique set of subdomains (Katz and Gartner 1988), precipitating substantive exchange with other academic fields (Busenitz et al. 2003, 2014; Ferreira et al. 2015; Low 2001). Each of these reviews, as well as others (Chandra 2017; Meyer et al. 2014) point out that such subdomains—for example, opportunities and organizing (Busenitz et al. 2003, 2014), family business and entrepreneurial leadership (Ferreira et al. 2015), or multi-level relationships (Davidsson 2016)—also represent an agenda for researchers going forward.

This volume in general, and this chapter in particular, seeks to answer another important question about the field of entrepreneurship: “how did we get here?” Not unlike the analysis of startup ventures themselves (e.g. Bamford et al. 1999; Beckman and Burton 2008; Newbert et al. 2007), here we are interested in how founding conditions within the field may have set the tone or provided guidance for subsequent academic research. Did a set of seminal articles about entrepreneurship provide this sort of imprinting guidance and direction? Do the ideas in such articles still have relevance today and can they continue to provide future guidance?

This chapter focuses on Bird’s (1988) Academy of Management Review article titled “Implementing Entrepreneurial Ideas: The Case for Intention.” Bird (2015) herself recently reviewed the contribution of her own work but with a narrow agenda focusing carefully on intentions research. Here we go broader, considering its impact across the field of entrepreneurship. We make the case that Bird at that time was intending to outline pivotal ideas that could guide further investigations about entrepreneurship. Importantly, her article critically distinguished the field of entrepreneurship from the field of strategy, addressing one part of the legitimacy issue that so occupied entrepreneurship scholars in the early days (Amit et al. 1993; Brockhaus 1987; Gartner 1989; Hisrich 1988; Hofer and Bygrave 1992; Low and MacMillan 1988; MacMillan and Katz 1992; Sexton 1988; Van de Ven 1992; VanderWerf and Brush 1989). We find that over time the emergence of subdomains in entrepreneurship research, which help define the field, reflects seminal ideas in her article. With attention to recent developments in entrepreneurship research, we argue that Bird’s article continues to be highly relevant since such trends also reflect important concepts she discussed at that time.

The chapter proceeds as follows. First we provide a bibliometric analysis of Bird’s article that demonstrates the impact and contributions it has had on entrepreneurship research. The data provide prima facie evidence for inclusion of this article in this volume on seminal contributions and tells a compelling story about article impact over a long period of time. Following this analysis, we briefly review seminal ideas presented in the Bird (1988) article. This includes a set of concepts and relationships that have over time—and especially more recently—drawn critical attention from entrepreneurship researchers (although often using different terminologies). We also point out how Bird especially sought to separate what entrepreneurship research is all about from the domain of strategy, in which many budding entrepreneurship scholars had received their training. Next we discuss several key concepts that have become central to the subdomains of inquiry within the field, showing how these relate to ideas put forth by Bird. We report on an interview we conducted with the author regarding her aspirations at the time she published the article and her reflections on its impact nearly 30 years hence. And finally we turn to emergent areas within entrepreneurship research in 2017 that continue to reflect ideas originally appearing in Bird.

Article Impact

The call for chapters for this volume presented an interesting challenge: “draw attention to the seminal (classic) articles [from the 1970s or 1980s] that have made a profound contribution to the development of entrepreneurship as a serious academic discipline” (Javadian 2017). This reminded us coauthors of our “comprehensive exam” questions many years ago during our own doctoral training at the Universities of Colorado and Alabama, respectively. The question prompted much thought, debate and discussion. Ultimately it led to gathering data from the Web of Science (WoS) to confirm that our initial selection of Bird (1988) was supported by the data. In this section we report the findings from our analyses.

Bibliometric data not only documents quantitative impact but can also tell a story beyond the number of direct citations of an article. Analogically, our analytical approach finds support among entrepreneurs themselves. Successful entrepreneurial startups rely on their founders early on, but as they grow over time these founders may be less involved than they were previously, or not involved at all. Yet the trajectory and impact of their early involvement is still apparent as their firms develop over time. Think Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook or Sergey Brin at Google, who are still active but around whom much larger organizations and much broader services have since developed. Impact is evident even among long-gone founders such as Bill Gates at Microsoft, Elon Musk at PayPal and Steve Jobs at Apple. Similarly in the academic world direct citations may not tell the whole story of the impact of ideas presented in a particular article. The trajectory often includes the impact arising from secondary and other citations that build upon the original ideas and concepts. Jensen and Mackling’s (1976) Journal of Financial Economics article, for example, is widely credited for drawing attention to the concept of agency theory and the use of stock incentives in organizations. These ideas were subsequently taught in business school MBA programs in the 1980s and 1990s and led to managerial behavior contributing to financial market excesses (Khurana 2007). And yet by 1990 this article had only been directly cited about 800 times in academic journals, far too few times to have impacted the teaching of finance globally. It was secondary and others’ citations of this seminal article that popularized the ideas and led to their prevalence in business school curricula. Thus in our analysis we consider not only the direct citations of Bird’s work but also the extent to which the citing works—and those beyond—“tell the story” of the ideas her paper developed.

The WoS, operated by Clarivate Analytics, is the world’s largest citation database. Its “core collection” comprises indexed publication data from the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Arts & Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) and the recently added Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), together covering the world’s top-tier international and regional journals with over 1 billion references spanning more than 100 years. To identify the most impactful articles in the field of entrepreneurship, we searched for all journal articles in business or management between 1970 and 1989 whose title contained any combination of the keywords entrepreneur*, new venture, venture creation or business creation. The results produced a list of 445 articles, and the most cited of these papers appears in Table 7.1. Bird’s intentions article is the fifth most-cited paper from this 20-year period.Footnote 1 Of all 6400+ published articles similarly identified over the entire 47-year span since 1970 up to the present day, this paper is 44th in its citation count.

Table 7.1 Highest-cited entrepreneurship articles, published 1970–1989
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Bird’s paper has been cited 412 times in all sources combined in the WoS database, with 394 of these citations from the “core collection.” In turn, the papers citing Bird (“secondary” citations) have themselves been cited 11,680 times in the period 1988–2017. During this follow-up 30-year time period since Bird (1988), and using the same keyword search criteria, a total of 6075 papers have been published in business and management journals and have been cited a total of 154,371 times. Figure 7.1 portrays the growth of all published papers in entrepreneurship since 1991 using these search criteria, clearly showing “takeoff” for the entire field after the early 2000s. When we account for both the direct and secondary citations to the Bird intentions article, we find that combined they account for on average 9.6% of all entrepreneurship paper citations over the last 25 years. The trend line of Bird’s relative impact over the most recent 15 years remains consistently in the 8–9% range.

Fig. 7.1
figure 1

Impact of Bird 1988 relative to entrepreneurship field

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We next analyzed the content of papers citing Bird that we had identified using the search criteria. In this analysis we included the papers which have themselves been cited at least 50 times over the period 1989–2017; a total of 65 papers were included (and these represent the foundation for 84% of all the Bird secondary citations). We used the keywords list for each article presented in WoS; these keywords are supplied by the database service or in some cases capture author-supplied keywords (Ferreira et al. 2015). We supplemented the keyword list for each article by our own review of each article’s abstract and content, occasionally including keywords that together we felt enhanced the accuracy of article content represented by keywords. Keywords for all articles were summarized and then categorized using five descriptive dimensions: person, cognition , organization, emergence , performance (see Table 7.2). Person-oriented work tends to reflect observable characteristics and demographics of those involved in new venture formation. Cognition work revolves around underlying psychology, attitudes, knowledge structure and thought processes that affect entrepreneurial decisions and behavior. The category organization comprises keywords having to do with firm activities related to strategy, process and the environment. The emergence category accounts for research which investigates dynamic aspects of entrepreneurship—nascence, startup, changes in size and scale, growth and pursuing new opportunities. Performance keywords appeared in research that focused on performance dimensions, such as survival and varying measures of success, as critical to the theory or empirical data collected.Footnote 2

Table 7.2 Categorized keywords in papers citing Bird (1988)
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Using keyword categorizations there appear to be some differences over time among journals in which Bird’s intentions paper was cited (Fig. 7.2). Over 30 years Bird-citing articles in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice have devoted relatively more attention to the person category, while those articles appearing in Journal of Business Venturing have had relatively greater emphasis on emergence and performance . Not unexpectedly, major management journals in which Bird-citing articles appeared have tended to emphasize organization since in all likelihood that content is more aligned with their editorial mission and readership interests. And also not unexpectedly, other non-management journals (e.g. Journal of Applied Psychology) indicate a much stronger propensity to publish Bird-citing articles dealing with cognition .

Fig. 7.2
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Trends in content of papers citing Bird (1988) by journal

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Over time the emphasis of papers citing Bird has manifest interesting changes (Fig. 7.3). Davidsson mentions how the focus of entrepreneurship research on individuals waned in the years immediately following Gartner’s (1988) “attack and some disappointing results” (2016: 20). This dynamic is reflected in Fig. 7.3, showing that person research only picked up again in the late 1990s and has blossomed in the latest five-year period. Also reflecting this trend was a greater focus on cognition research in the ten years following Bird, as researchers sought to move beyond personal characteristics to mindsets and underlying cognitive dimensions. Cognition work slipped in relative importance in the early 2000s but has since gained traction according to recent reviews (Gregoire et al. 2015; Mitchell et al. 2007). As person- and cognition -focused research has increased in relative importance among Bird-citing articles, work focused on organization has declined. Emergence-oriented research seems to have gained greater prominence over the last 15 years.

Fig. 7.3
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Trends in content of papers citing Bird (1988) by years

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Finally, we sorted the articles that directly cited Bird to determine which papers are the most highly cited in each of the categories developed from our keyword analysis. Table 7.3 displays the papers in each category that have themselves been cited more than 100 times since publication. Two findings arise from this cut of the data. First, of the 31 papers appearing in this table 19 (61%) were published in entrepreneurship journals. This stands in marked contrast to Table 7.1’s listing of the most influential articles published during the 20 years of the 1970s–1980s. During that earlier period only 5 of the top 20 papers (25%) appeared in entrepreneurship journals. It is apparent that Bird’s impact has been broad, in both entrepreneurship and management publications, and that the impact is particularly strong within the entrepreneurship discipline’s now more-established journals and readership base. Second, we note that five of the seven most-cited papers in the “person” category are also listed in the “cognition ” category. This reflects our earlier comment (see earlier, note 2) that more recent articles focused on individuals have often cited earlier “characteristics” research and used a discussion of observable proxies as a launching point for deeper and more substantive exploration of the thought processes and decision frameworks of entrepreneurs.

Table 7.3 Highest-cited articles citing Bird (1988), by category (Citations > 100)
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The preceding brief keyword content analysis exhibits face validity with commentary provided by other researchers in their periodic reviews, as mentioned earlier. Two of the major categories we identified—person and organization—reflect categories previously identified in reviews of the field of entrepreneurship (Busenitz et al. 2003, 2014). In addition two of our categories (cognition , emergence ) are indicative of aspects of Bird-citing research that are not usually called out in other reviews, but which we interpret as indicative of Bird’s original intentions in her article and of important future direction for the field.

Bird’s Intentionality Framework

In her seminal work Bird (1988) sets forth a behavioral framework that connects ideas with outcomes through the agency of intentionality. Bird seeks to move away from explanations of entrepreneurial action based in traits or experience- and economics-based contexts. Intentionality, as defined by Bird, is a “state of mind” that guides an individual down a unique path in the achievement of goals by directing the individual’s attention. Specifically, entrepreneurial intentions guide the entrepreneur toward the creation of a new venture or value creation within existing ventures. She conceptualizes intentionality, which leads to entrepreneurial actions, as coming from the interplay between personal and social contexts and rational and intuitive thinking.

Through the agency of intentionality, Bird provides a unique foundation for later work that would address each of the dimensions revealed by the citation analysis previously discussed—person, cognition , organization, emergence and performance . In regard to the personal and cognitive basis for entrepreneurship Bird reasons that an intentions framework provides a psychological basis for understanding the behaviors associated with entrepreneurship that is not based solely in individual traits or contexts. The intentions framework provides a vehicle through which not only the individual demographics of entrepreneurs might be considered but also the underlying psychological and attitudinal characteristics.

Bird’s intentionality framework addresses the organizational process by arguing that most entrepreneurs tend to be ends oriented among those who are more opportunistic in approach, as opposed to process oriented, tending to build larger and more complex organizations. She notes that it is sometimes more difficult for entrepreneurs to be strongly goal oriented as a result of the need to often proceed tentatively and with limited commitments in order to be opportunistic and tactical. Successful entrepreneurs manage this dissonance through a unique ability that Bird likens to a camera lens. She reasons that entrepreneurs are able to focus on both the minute day-to-day operational details, while at the same time zooming out to take in the big-picture details that exist in both the present and future. This complex form of ambidexterity enables the successful entrepreneur to maintain a variable strategic focus that allows the organization to be both goal directed and opportunistic.

Bird suggests that entrepreneurial emergence is driven and supported by a unique temporal tension maintained by entrepreneurs. As a result of the entrepreneurs’ significant investment in the new venture and their need to control the potential outcomes of their decisions, entrepreneurs experience a greater level of temporal tension than typical organizational managers. Entrepreneurs, she concludes, are more focused on the now and the future with reflection on the past limited primarily to what is necessary to succeed in the future. Entrepreneurs also experience the passage of time differently. As a result of rapidly changing environments, entrepreneurs must make decisions quickly. They are able to do this as a result of their ability to recognize patterns more quickly than non-entrepreneurial managers through vigilance and a capacity to see beyond the present to the future. It is this ability that facilitates the pursuit of new opportunities.

The performance of the entrepreneurial venture is undergirded by the development of a posture that links the entrepreneur’s values, beliefs, needs, wants and habits to the world inhabited by the entrepreneur and venture. Bird suggests that the successful entrepreneur’s intentional posture is one that is characterized by alignment and attunement. A focused alignment between the entrepreneur’s values, beliefs and needs and the venture, combined with an alignment between the entrepreneurial team and the venture, lead to critical synergies necessary for success. Beyond alignment, the entrepreneur’s attunement to the environment of the venture and to a defined mission aligning with the values and beliefs of the entrepreneur are critical to the ability to be opportunistic while at the same time dealing quickly and effectively with setbacks.

Ultimately, Bird’s purpose in proposing an intentions model was the articulation of an idiosyncratic domain for entrepreneurship research that would clearly differentiate entrepreneurship from strategic management. Additionally she sought to set forth a framework that would provide for the study of entrepreneurial founding, growth and survival in ways that could extend existing organizational theory. We elaborate on a number of the key contributions of Bird’s framework for the field of entrepreneurship in the following discussion.

Key Contributions

In this section we discuss key contributions of Bird (1988) to research in the field of entrepreneurship. We first address the impact her article had on differentiating the field of entrepreneurship from strategy and other disciplines. Then we review how the categories of research that emerged from her paper parallel important developments in the field. It is not our intention in this section to offer exhaustive reviews of the literature within each of these categories, since others have recently provided much more comprehensive reviews and commentaries (e.g. Busenitz et al. 2014; Davidsson and Wiklund 2001; de Mol et al. 2015; Ferreira et al. 2015; Marvel et al. 2016; Meyer et al. 2014; Shepherd et al. 2015; Yadav and Unni 2016). Instead, we comment in each part later on how the trajectory of ideas through these categories of work reflect what Bird explicitly or implicitly was drawing attention to. We note that a number of the papers mentioned in our review later do not specifically cite Bird herself. Yet such papers do cite the papers that did cite Bird directly. In this sense the story of Bird’s impact, as argued previously, is tied more to the evolution of ideas that came from her paper than to the numeric direct citation counts.

Entrepreneurship Versus Strategy

In the early 1980s, prior to the publication of Bird’s article, the field of strategic management research was heavily influenced by the contingency framework. This framework focused on the process through which organizational managers make the decisions necessary for achieving the objectives and goals of the firm (Hofer 1975). Hofer and Schendel (1978) argue that this framework embraces a definition of strategy as a process through which organizations determine how to deploy resources, considering a range of environmental factors, to achieve the objectives of the organization. Flowing from this understanding of strategic management, both the research and theories explored during this time period focused on a range of contingency variables deemed of importance. Much attention was paid to the relationship between strategy and the internal environment of the firm and in specific organizational structures (Lenz 1980), the external environment of the firm (Miller and Friesen 1983), the unique resources of the firm (Wernerfelt 1984), firm performance (Chakravarthy 1986; Miller 1988) and a range of other contingency variables (Hambrick and Lei 1985). Consistent with this view, the firm was the primary level of analysis for strategy research with several theorists also calling for research at levels more general than the individual firm (Saunders and Thompson 1980).

During this same time period, researchers and theorists in the strategy field were beginning to turn their attention to the unique nature of emerging new ventures. The frameworks applied to understanding the emergence of new firms often reflected the contingency approach focusing on structure (Minkes and Foxall 1980), interactions with the environment (Murray 1984) and resources brought to the venture by the entrepreneur (Cooper and Dunkelberg 1987). While this approach yielded important understandings regarding how ventures emerge, in 1980 the editors of the then new Strategic Management Journal point out one critically important difference for emerging ventures (Schendel et al. 1980). In arguing that strategic and operational management are activities that occur simultaneously within organizations, they note one important exception—a newly emerging venture. They argue that in these types of organizations these activities occur sequentially. This suggestion opens the door for the need to understand in greater depth the unique nature of new ventures.

Strategic management during the years leading up to Bird was also preoccupied with the Porterian view of industry analysis and attention to how a firm achieves a dominant position in the marketplace. The interests of strategists lay in the stability of incumbent firms existing in well-formed industries. And even as resource-based theory began to shed light on how internal sources of competitive advantage can lead to such dominant positions (Barney 1986), resource theorists explicitly stated this theory was inapplicable to new ventures and startups (Wernerfelt 1984).

There would be limited exploration of the unique differences presented by emerging ventures prior to Bird setting out her intentions framework. Bird argues that what differentiates her framework from the strategic management framework is the focus on the individual in relationship to the firm as opposed to the firm level of analysis. Bird sets forth a framework that is behavioral rather than institutional. She focuses on intentionality as a state of mind that directs attention toward both the organization’s goals and the paths for achieving those goals. She addresses a psychological base for venture creation that provides a framework for understanding how the external sequential nature of the emergence of a new venture is facilitated by an internal process (internal to the entrepreneur) that often simultaneously deals with a range of the same contingency factors considered in the strategic management process. And her entire framework is couched in the sort of dynamism and anticipated change over time that was fairly foreign to many strategic management thinkers interested in preserving status quo of superior-performing firms.

Cognition and Person

In this part we focus on cognition , since as mentioned earlier the vast majority of highly cited papers in the “person” category are fundamentally oriented toward the sorts of keywords defining the “cognition” category (e.g. attitude, efficacy, intent , knowledge, etc.). We note that in the latest five-year period of our analysis, from 2010 to 2014, the combination of cognition and person articles represent over 63% of all articles in our keyword analysis dataset. The trend over time since 1989 is unmistakably an increasing presence of this type of research among those citing Bird. This trend is confirmed by Ferreira et al. (2015) in their review of all entrepreneurship research published in top management journals.

As profiled earlier in this chapter Bird develops arguments about the psychology-action connections in starting new firms. She directs our attention to “the complex relationships among entrepreneurial ideas and the consequent outcomes of those ideas” (1988: 442). Cognition research in entrepreneurship is similarly motivated. In one of the earliest reviews of entrepreneurship cognition research, Mitchell et al. argue that an underlying assumption of research addressing the basic question “how do entrepreneurs think?” is concerned with “distinctive ways of thinking and behaving” (2007: 3) or the “thinking-doing” link that is focused on new value creation. Three of four areas of research identified in this review build on ideas initially presented by Bird: heuristics-based logic, perceived connections and alertness, and effectuation.

Entrepreneurship cognition scholars are keen to identify the variables that affect the entrepreneur’s decision-making under uncertainty. The use of heuristics aids entrepreneurs in making connections between market developments and new opportunities (Gaglio and Katz 2001) through information acquisition and framing (Baron 2006; West 2003). Heuristics-based decisions are associated with less structured and rational thinking and are thus often reflected in more flexible organizational designs that can accommodate the sorts of change which entrepreneurs routinely confront (Busenitz et al. 2003). Thus intentions —the combination of the rational and the intuitive—“determine the form and direction of an organization at its inception” (Bird 1988: 444).

When Bird describes the interplay between the rational and intuitive, between the decisive and tentative, between the future and present, and the zoom lens agility back and forth between detail and big picture, she is describing the sort of effectuation process later developed by Sarasvathy (2001). Here thinking and action proceed together. Where the growth-oriented entrepreneur is ends oriented, her intentions tend to be generalized such as “creating a new venture or creating new values” (Bird 1988: 443). Similarly, for Sarasvathy, “usually all the entrepreneur knows when he or she starts out is something very general, such as the desire to make lots of money or to … simply purse an interesting idea that seems worth pursuing” (2001: 244). In both formulations entrepreneurs proceed through action, and then through trial and error they are vigilant, open-minded and have the ability to learn.

One of the cognition segment papers listed in Table 7.3 is Cope’s (2005) paper on entrepreneurial learning . Cope implies that Bird’s entrepreneur was all about doing, not about reflexively doing. But as described just previously, for Bird nothing could be further from the case; her characterization of how the entrepreneur operates opens the door to ideas about entrepreneurial learning . In Bird’s analysis, by acting and deciding in the present the entrepreneur compresses time lags which can lead to more rapid iterations between stimulus and response. This sort of iterative approach, subsequently written about by others (e.g. Argyris and Schön 1996; Corbett 2005, 2007; Gemmell et al. 2011), has often been used foundationally to discuss entrepreneurial learning .

A recent review of entrepreneurial team cognition also demonstrates foundations in Bird. In their review of this facet of cognition, de Mol et al. (2015) find that entrepreneurial team cognition emerges from complex interactions arising from the patterning of knowledge among team members that leads to similar attitudes, beliefs and interpretations. Bird also discusses how the psychological alignment concept relates to synergy that can be achieved when employees’ needs, values and beliefs are similarly aligned to the entrepreneur’s intentions and can thus work toward common goals.

Another recent literature review, on opportunity research (Wood and McKelvie 2015), further emphasizes ideas about cognition that are implied by Bird. Reflecting other reviews of the entrepreneurship literature (e.g. Busenitz et al. 2014), this paper describes opportunity evaluation as central to the field of entrepreneurship. Then mirroring Bird (though not citing her), Wood and McKelvie state “one’s beliefs about the attractiveness of pursuing an imagined future state … are the impetus for actions taken (or not) that eventually lead to visible outcroppings of entrepreneurship” (2015: 256). Further, they claim that “what distinguishes opportunity evaluation … is the shift from cognition to actions … where they use their experience and knowledge … by constructing mental images of ‘what could be’” to make decisions about what is worth pursuing. The connection between imagined future state and action is precisely what Bird writes about. And three themes emerging from their review of the “opportunity as future focused cognition” literature are those which directly parallel ideas originally found in Bird: (1) integration of dispositions, emotions, experience and situational variables (intention ); (2) congruence among mental models of various stakeholders (attunement and alignment) and (3) action orientation where decisions go beyond mere business plans (strategic focus and posture).

Emergence

Prior to the mid-1980s, entrepreneurship research had as its focus the unique attributes of the individuals who choose to become entrepreneurs (Gartner 1985). These early frameworks drew on the same situational variables being explored in the strategic management literature—the individual, the organization, the environment and the process through which the entrepreneur brings into existence the new venture (Gartner 1985). The process was seen, in unison with the strategic management view, as being sequential, beginning with the recognition of an opportunity and culminating in the building of an organization capable of responding to its environment. Bird would enter into this discussion of new venture emergence by proposing entrepreneurial intentions as the mechanism through which the seemingly sequential activities necessary for the emergence of a venture are bound together in simultaneity.

Shane and Venkataraman (2000) argue that for new ventures to emerge there must exist different beliefs regarding the relative value of resources. It is this difference in belief in the value of resources in both the present and the future that lead to entrepreneurial discoveries and the emergence of organizations necessary for value creation. The intentions model, as set forth by Bird, provides a framework for understanding why entrepreneurs are able to discover unique uses and values for resources. Their ability to move quickly and capably between the present and future horizons, between tactical and strategic imperatives, and to connect their own values, beliefs and needs to the world they inhabit allows them to see opportunities and uses for resources that are just not envisioned by others.

Research on the emergence of new ventures, after Bird’s writing, has focused on a range of dynamics. These dynamics include the processes through which opportunities are recognized and the birth, growth and evolution of organizations to seize these opportunities (Lichtenstein et al. 2006). A key word search of research citing Bird’s intentions framework uncovers a very similar set of dynamic processes encompassing the focus of the field in recent years—opportunity, creation, startup, nascent, growth and so on. Entrepreneurial intentions are linked to the application of resources to bring about venture opportunities (Rotefoss and Kolvereid 2005), innovations that lead to creation (Oke et al. 2007), the emergence of rapid growth ventures (Barringer et al. 2005) and born-international ventures (Kundu and Katz 2003). Acknowledging the critical role of intentions to venture emergence, researchers have also sought to understand the processes through which entrepreneurial intentions are formed. This work has focused on the role of personality (Zhao et al. 2010), gender and culture (Shinnar et al. 2012) and self-efficacy (McGee et al. 2009).

Lichtenstein, Dooley and Lumpkin (2006) conceptualize emergence as deriving from three distinct forms of organizing —visioning, strategic and tactical organizing . They argue that these forms of organizing all occur simultaneously during the creation of new ventures. The intentions framework, as set forth by Bird, has proven particularly useful and enduring in framing how entrepreneurs envision new and novel uses for resources (opportunity recognition ) and start and grow organizations capable of exploiting entrepreneurial opportunities through their ability to move quickly and adroitly between the forms of organizing necessary for new venture emergence.

Organization

Important to the venture creation process is not only the entrepreneur’s ability to create value in applying resources in unique and novel ways as set forth by Shane and Venkataraman (2000) but also the ability of the entrepreneur to configure resources in a manner that is appropriate to achieve the goals of the entrepreneur (Zahra et al. 2006). The focus of the entrepreneurship field on the role and mode of organizing has been significant. Busenitz et al. (2014) note that of the ten most impactful articles published prior to 2009, four had mode of organizing as a central focus. In their review of entrepreneurship research published between 1985 and 2009, Busenitz et al. (2014) confirm 80 publications focusing on mode of organizing . This research accounted for 37% of published entrepreneurship research during the time period studied. Research in this domain has as its emphasis the development of strategies both tactical and operational, the acquisition and use of resources, and the development of systems and structures (Busenitz et al. 2003).

Bird envisioned the intentional process, which had at its core the entrepreneur’s beliefs, values and needs, as the primary driver of the organizing process. She argues that entrepreneurs tend to be more opportunistic and tactical, resulting in organizations that can be simultaneously goal directed and opportunistic. Bird’s conceptualization has been acknowledged in a wide range of work including research focusing on the differences between entrepreneurs and managers in large firms (Busenitz and Barney 1997), resource theory and entrepreneurial activities (Hill and Levenhagen 1995), and corporate management (Hornsby et al. 2002).

Looking Forward

So far we have highlighted recent research that explicitly focuses on several categories of research, historically determined through our keyword analysis, that reflect ideas or concepts originally appearing in Bird. Taking a step back it is apparent that this sort of dynamic—and the research which investigates it—also implicitly exists at the intersections of the Venn diagram appearing in recent reviews of entrepreneurship research (Busenitz et al. 2003,2014). These are the intersections of individuals and teams, opportunities, and organizing . Whether we are discussing the “creation” view or the “discovery” view of opportunity (Alvarez and Barney 2007), either is inert without both the intentions and actions of the entrepreneur. Similarly, any sort of organizing effort cannot be fully appreciated unless and until we understand the intentions of the entrepreneur with respect to the opportunity toward which such intentions are focused. Bird holds that entrepreneurship is not about ideas or people or organizing , but about all simultaneously. Thus it seems that Bird’s intent from the beginning was to orient entrepreneurship researchers’ attention to the intersections among these three domains. Unfortunately, according to a recent literature review (Busenitz et al. 2014), this has not occurred. That review demonstrates that only 20% of entrepreneurship publications in major management journals, and only 14% of such publications in Journal of Business Venturing, address any of these intersections. “Research that focuses on a unitary dimension may be unable to contribute to an understanding of entrepreneurship phenomenon” (Busenitz et al. 2003: 298). Thus in this section we briefly speculate about three promising research trajectories in entrepreneurship research which may continue to build on Bird’s seminal ideas by more directly addressing these intersections.

Reflecting the predominantly psychological underpinning of Bird’s intention article, the concept of “situated cognition ” has recently garnered greater attention and offers opportunity for entrepreneurship researchers. Dew et al. argue that the field of entrepreneurship, including research focused on entrepreneurial cognition , “has been dominated largely by individualistic and static conceptions of entrepreneurial cognitions … ‘boxologies’ [that] … fall short of capturing … dynamism and interactivity” (2015: 143). This may be because cognition research on entrepreneurs, like that targeted at so many other domains of inquiry in the field, “remains characterized by a multiplicity of theoretical approaches, foci, methodologies, variables and measures” (Gregoire et al. 2015: 126). Is there an echo in here? These are precisely the same criticisms leveled at the field in much, much earlier accounts (e.g. Busenitz et al. 2003; Low and MacMillan 1988).

Situated cognition research responds to such concerns and fundamentally builds off ideas in Bird. Just as Bird’s focus on the psychological precursors to action led her to a framework that connected ideas with outcomes through agency, so too does situated cognition involve “perception and action in the context of a human body situated in a real world environment” (Dew et al. 2015: 144). In this view cognition is tied to actions and objects and is shaped by the social, cultural and physical contexts in which entrepreneurs find themselves. The core of this idea is that attention to the cognitive property alone in the mind of the entrepreneur (e.g. heuristic, anchor, frame) is insufficient to capture the dynamic of the entrepreneurial endeavor. As the contexts change, so will relevant cognitive dimensions. As entrepreneurs act, see, fail, succeed and learn, they in fact change the context and will thus change their own cognitions . The recursive nature of the process reflects the characteristics and qualities that Bird described in her model of intention-direction. While Bird acknowledges that entrepreneurs ultimately proceed down “corridors” as they move further along, the ways in which they act speak to the dimensions of situated cognition . Their temporal tension, “fast dancing” decision style, strategic zoom-lens approach and continual efforts to attune and align: all speak to the same recursive process described by situated cognition .

A balance to the idea of situated cognition are growing efforts to drill down ever more carefully into “boxed-in” cognitive characteristics of the entrepreneur. One key component of Bird’s intentions model is intuition, which has recently received greater attention (Baldacchino et al. 2015). Bird’s model suggests that intuition is one important element that helps to balance rational analytical thinking, leading to intentions characterized by greater freedom and expanded creativity. Such a central facet of the intentions model deserves greater attention. Baldacchino et al. note that of the 25 published papers on entrepreneurial intuition, more than half have appeared within the last ten years. Another drill-down area within the mind of the entrepreneur is presented by Krueger (2007, 2011). He advocates a constructivist approach for understanding how deep-seated beliefs underlie entrepreneurial intentions , invoking ideas from social neuroscience to make his case. Here a form of learning which results in changed entrepreneurial intentions springs from modifications to deeply embedded belief systems. In turn, he allows that such changes may be precipitated by interactions in the physical and social world. This suggests that intentions may be formed or modified by interactions at different levels. Together with situated cognition ideas, this presents a compelling agenda for future work in cognition .

Mitchell et al. point out, though, that “sensemaking is action-oriented” (2011: 774). As we commented earlier in this chapter, opportunities however identified are inert without action, since some identified opportunities are in fact never pursued (Wood and McKelvie 2015). Just as Bird sought to make the connection between ideas and actions, so too now is a movement afoot to further the “entrepreneurship as action” perspective (Gartner et al. 2016). Social practice theory investigates the interrelations between organizations, organizing practices and the practitioners who enact them (Whittington 2006). “Entrepreneurship is ongoing practice of creatively organizing people and resources according to opportunity” (Johannisson 2011: 140). Research in this domain thus also seeks to understand how individual actions and collective action harmonize toward a set of goals. This is a more contemporary turn that builds on ideas such as enactment, bricolage, networking and other actions in which entrepreneurs engage and is broad enough to include ideas related to effectuation. We are pleased to see recent research, which extols the importance of better understanding entrepreneurial behavior as the mediator between cognitions and outcomes, including efforts to better define and catalog the nature of behaviors and how they may be accessed by researchers (e.g. Bird et al. 2012). Understanding practice may involve greater use of research methods less prevalent in published research, such as qualitative case studies and ethnographic approaches. But such research can be powerful in revealing facets not fully captured in traditional survey work and can lead to novel new theoretical speculations (e.g. Lichtenstein and Brush 2001). This notion of being willing to move beyond traditional and accepted methods is consistent with the challenge set forth by Bird in 1988 and it is still an important refrain in her challenge to researchers today (Bird 2017).

Conclusion

We conclude by stepping back to consider suggestions implied by Bird (1988) for future entrepreneurship research. We consider the temporal aspects of entrepreneurship, a continuing theme in Bird’s work (e.g. Bird 1992; Bird and West 1997). The dynamic of entrepreneurship—creating something new over time—is so obvious and so central to the phenomenon. Research that cites Bird (1988) often deals with issues and dimensions captured by keywords in the category of “emergence ,” as founders and their new ventures continue to learn, change and grow over time. This learning and growth is directed, in Bird’s view, by the vision underpinning the entrepreneur’s intentions . The entrepreneur puts the vision out there and then evolves the vision over time by listening carefully to what people are echoing (Bird 2017). In her view, in order to understand how this process works over time, researchers must focus on the rhythm of actions and reactions, as do entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs do not know when things will happen and so must focus on the rhythm, as do great musicians, to understand when it is critical and possible to improvise (Bird 2017). The iterative and interactive processes mentioned earlier reinforce the idea that to understand entrepreneurship we must watch it over time, track it over time, understand how time’s passing affects the process of learning and development , modifications to intentions and leads to revised actions.

Entrepreneurship is also multi-level and multi-dimensional. This sense is at the core of Bird’s article, which sought to link a chain of important concepts: psychological precursors—intentions —actions—outcomes. Reflected in more recent reviews of research in the field and of our own catalog herein of papers citing Bird, one cannot fully appreciate entrepreneurship without simultaneously accounting for persons, opportunity, organizing actions and context. Davidsson (2016) identifies this aspect of entrepreneurship in his recent review of significant developments .

Conducting and then publishing research which addresses these temporal and multi-level dynamics is a continuing challenge going forward for the field of entrepreneurship. As the field has become more legitimate, it has attracted greater interest and it has become a more competitive publishing environment. We surmise that manuscript flow has increased faster than the availability of high-quality publication outlets. Such competitive dynamics will tend to further institutionalize the sort of research that has been used in other more traditional management disciplines. As the field has moved a bit past the theory development stage into theory testing, research which takes advantage of larger datasets and is generative of power in statistical testing can encourage researchers away from longitudinal research. Traditional management research which “mixes level of analysis” is more difficult to pass muster, and so entrepreneurship researchers eager to publish stay within the bounds of what has historically received greater acceptance.

Yet we remain confident that scholars in the field of entrepreneurship can and will address these challenges. The advent of reviews and more research on situated cognition , learning, entrepreneurial behaviors and other subdomains is encouraging. These efforts speak to the general research challenges to a more holistic understanding of the entrepreneurship phenomenon and in many ways reflect the ideas originally proposed by Bird three decades ago.

One of the most enduring impacts of Bird’s work is that it broke from the existing research at that time for both the strategic management and entrepreneurship fields. Her focus on the importance of considering a psychological basis for venture creation demonstrated a willingness to be entrepreneurial as a researcher by taking the risks inherent in charting a different course. From a recent interview, it is clear that this call for entrepreneurship researchers to be academic entrepreneurs is still a passion for Bird and a challenge to scholars in the field of entrepreneurship (Bird 2017).