In this presentation, Dr. Andrew Corbett, a professor of entrepreneurship at Babson College, expands on foundational research that linked prior knowledge to entrepreneurial opportunity discovery by introducing the importance of how that knowledge is acquired and transformed. Drawing on a study of roughly 400 high‑technology entrepreneurs, he examined participants’ learning styles, the ways they obtained new information, and how they integrated it with existing knowledge to identify and develop opportunities. The findings reveal that opportunity discovery is not solely contingent on the amount of prior knowledge; it is also significantly shaped by learning styles. Entrepreneurs tend to have a default learning style—such as abstract conceptualization, experiential learning, or observational learning—and relying on a single style can limit opportunity generation. The practical implication is that entrepreneurs should become aware of their default style and deliberately cultivate multiple learning modes to enhance both the search for and development of entrepreneurial opportunities.
Chapters
Sure, my name is Dr. Andrew Corbett, PhD, PhD. I'm a professor of entrepreneurship at Babson College. There was a lot of fundamental and foundational research that spoke to the importance of prior knowledge and its importance in helping entrepreneurs find or develop entrepreneurial opportunities. You know, I was looking at it and I thought there was something else. It wasn't just the prior knowledge you had, but it was how you acquired that knowledge and how you combined it with the knowledge that you already had. So what I looked for at that point is I looked into a lot of work in learning theory and looked at how do people not just use their prior knowledge, but how do they acquire new knowledge, and how then when it comes in, they transform that knowledge with their existing knowledge base to develop, to find and then develop their opportunities. I looked at a subset of about 400 high-technology entrepreneurs, and I gave them some information about certain protocols, and also at the same time tested their different learning styles. And how they acquired and transformed incoming data and information and tried to get a sense of what they would do with their existing knowledge and how many opportunities they could find and what they would develop based upon all that. What I found was that there were— it's not just contingent upon, you know, your prior knowledge, but it is contingent upon certain learning styles. So if you acquire knowledge in one way, transform that knowledge with your existing base in one way, you may or may not find more opportunities. The real implications for practice that came out of this was an ability to see that we all have a default learning style, and that default learning style is useful, but like so many things that we do, you need to learn holistically and learn in a number of different styles. And so that it helps people to understand what their learning style is, and entrepreneurs to understand how they normally would without any other impetus, acquire knowledge, transform it so that they can look to find other ways to do that as well. So it's really a place to round out your learning style when you're trying to search for and develop opportunities for entrepreneurial endeavors. Some of us might learn best by actually abstract conceptualization, like really reading stuff and studying it and figuring it out, and that's fine, but if that's the only way that you're going to try to develop opportunities, you might be at a handicap. Another way, of course, that we all know is learning through experience or learning through doing stuff. So other people go out and do things, and from that they interact. Entrepreneurs, or would-be entrepreneurs, nascent entrepreneurs, need to develop all of these types of learning styles. You might, in the abstract, develop an idea, but if you do that and you don't go out and experience it and get into the community and test that idea, you're not going to get far. So it's a way to show people that, sure, if you're an abstract conceptualist You may also want to do some experimental learning, or you may want to watch others who do other things, and from that way you'll be able to develop better opportunities.
