Design of entrepreneur questionnaire

Although discovering opportunities is a necessary condition for starting a business, it is not a sufficient condition. After discovering opportunities, potential entrepreneurs must decide how to use them. It is really difficult to collect data about the situation that opportunities are discovered but the business is unsuccessful, but the reality is that not all discovered opportunities are finally developed. However, it should be recognized that the identification, evaluation and utilization of entrepreneurial opportunities are the process of interaction between entrepreneurs' personality, abilities and resources and entrepreneurial opportunities themselves. Why do some people take advantage of the opportunities they find and others don't? When and how do they develop these opportunities? The answer to the question is a function involving the characteristics of opportunity and the essential characteristics of individuals. Let's discuss the influence of entrepreneurial factors on the utilization of opportunities. First, pay attention to the ability and resources of entrepreneurs. At any time, only a few people can find a specific opportunity. Why did these people find a specific opportunity and not others? Past studies have put forward two factors that affect the possibility of a specific person discovering a specific opportunity: having information that is important for identifying opportunities; Have the necessary cognitive ability to evaluate opportunities. In addition to personal characteristics, the most important factor affecting the development and utilization of opportunities is the ability of entrepreneurs to organize and allocate resources. The research on these individuals' knowledge, ability, resources and capital has been paid attention to in recent years, and considerable progress has been made, which has shifted the research focus of entrepreneurs from personality characteristics to the analysis of ability and resources. In 2002, Alvarez and Busenitz analyzed the relationship between resource-based theory and entrepreneurship, and put forward the resource theory of entrepreneurship. They theoretically expand the boundaries of resources. In this broad sense, entrepreneurs' human resources, entrepreneurs' cognitive ability (the ability to identify and generate new opportunities), the trust relationship established with other individuals and organizations, the ability to guide organizations to set up enterprises with necessary resources, and the output ability to create various market demands through enterprises are all resources that affect entrepreneurs' activities. Moreover, these resources have two characteristics: social complexity and path dependence. Social complexity. When the resources and capabilities of enterprises have social complexity, they become the source of sustainable heterogeneity (Barney, 1995). Resources with social complexity are difficult to imitate, because they are complex phenomena and difficult to manage and influence systematically. Many resources that lead to heterogeneity are social complexity, such as corporate culture (Barney, 1986), corporate reputation (Hill, 1990) and human capital (Carpenter, Sanders &: Gregersen, 200 1). Similar to these resources, resources related to entrepreneurs, such as entrepreneurs' ability, accumulated practical experience or skills, which enable entrepreneurs to make effective use of opportunities, have social complexity. Entrepreneurs' social complexity resources will add value to enterprises, which are difficult for other enterprises to imitate and create. Entrepreneurial resources have social complexity, which is very important for entrepreneurship, because it reminds us that complex technologies are not completely imitatable; The use of these complex technologies involves the use of resources with social complexity, which is more important. Path dependence. Entrepreneurial resources can evolve and develop continuously, but the new evolution and development is path-dependent. This view holds that the accumulation of special resources depends on past entrepreneurial decisions, and these decisions made by founders and future business managers constitute the DNA of enterprises. Sustainable competitive advantage is such a process of historical (path) trust (Barney,1991; Nelson & Winter, 1982).Barney 1987 pointed out that the role of opportunity and luck is to acquire different advanced levels of knowledge. However, we believe that entrepreneurs often develop different knowledge bases in order to coordinate scattered knowledge, because they have different abilities to learn and understand the development law of things. This is a different path for enterprises to develop different abilities and differences. In entrepreneurial enterprises, decision-making will play an important role in the future of enterprises because they are newly established small enterprises. The important source of enterprise differences is the history of enterprises, such as patented technology and learning curve. Because under this unique enterprise decision-making condition, the combination of enterprise-specific skills and resources leads to long-term path dependence of enterprises. The theories of á lvarez and BuSeinitz deeply touched some fundamental characteristics of entrepreneurial resources, and because of the particularity of entrepreneurial phenomenon, the social complexity and path dependence of industrial resources are more obvious than under the traditional concept, which has a greater impact on the development of enterprises. From this perspective, we can see more clearly that the study of entrepreneurship enriches and develops management theory. If Alvarez and BuSeinitz's theory of entrepreneurial resources can be established, then people with rich entrepreneurial resources are more likely to succeed in starting a business than those with poor entrepreneurial resources. In this way, the theory can better predict the success or failure of entrepreneurship. Then, the theoretical explanatory power and foresight of entrepreneurship research are improved. We believe that the theoretical ability of entrepreneurial resources will be full of vitality and development prospects. Second, the important resource of entrepreneurs, human capital. Although there are many controversies, previous empirical studies tend to support the positive relationship between human capital and entrepreneurial activities. It needs to be clear that the improvement of personal human capital, that is, personal knowledge level, is not only the result of formal education (such as university education), but also the result of informal education (such as work experience and vocational education). Working experience, learning at work and special course training in non-traditional formal education structure can theoretically enhance human capital. Empirical research shows that formal education has less influence on entrepreneurial activities than informal education. Entrepreneurs' work experience, management experience and previous entrepreneurial experience are significantly related to entrepreneurial activities. Davidson in 2003 &; Honig published a paper on the influence of human capital and social capital on entrepreneurial activities in Business Risk magazine. The longitudinal study of a large sample proves that there is a positive correlation between human capital and the discovery of entrepreneurial opportunities (based on the possibility of entrepreneurship) and between human capital and the successful utilization of opportunities (based on the frequency and rhythm of completed entrepreneurial activities). The research shows that the significant positive correlation between human capital and entrepreneurial opportunity discovery expressed by school education years is relatively small; The influence of human capital expressed by work experience on entrepreneurial activities is a small positive effect, but this indicator is not statistically significant; The strongest human capital variable is entrepreneurial experience, and there is a strong positive correlation between entrepreneurial experience and the discovery of entrepreneurial opportunities, which is statistically significant. This means that, generally speaking, people with entrepreneurial experience are more likely to start a business when other variables remain unchanged. For the development and utilization of opportunities, the influence of human capital is weakened, especially the relationship between formal education and opportunity utilization is very weak. Only the positive correlation between management experience and previous entrepreneurial experience is significant, and it has passed the statistical test. However, Davidson &; Honig's research does not support the positive correlation between human capital and entrepreneurial success (creating a viable business entity with the first sales and profits as indicators). Ability to identify opportunities. There are many examples in history: the creators of technological discovery failed to see the business opportunities (new production function relationship) brought by important technologies. Many previous studies have revealed the differences in people's ability to recognize this relationship. For example, cognitive science research points out that people's ability to integrate existing concepts and information into new concepts varies from person to person. Studies have pointed out that successful entrepreneurs see opportunities when others see risks. Barron's research found that entrepreneurs are more likely to find opportunities than others, because they think less counterfactual (for example, they seldom spend time and energy imagining "what should have been" in a specific situation), they are less likely to regret lost opportunities and are rarely influenced by inertia of inaction. Seinitz & Barney's research points out that the decision-making process of entrepreneurs is different from that of ordinary people, and their decisions are more exploratory and obviously biased. This irrational decision-making model helps entrepreneurs to make decisions quickly under the conditions of limited information, limited resources and uncertain risks. Social capital. Social capital involves the ability of subjects to gain benefits from social structure, network and membership relations. One of the reasons why social capital can become a useful entrepreneurial resource is that it can combine the subjects together, enhance the trust within the organization and support the external network in order to provide resources. The second reason is that social capital can provide information and other resources for entrepreneurship, which is a supportive (inclusive) lubricant. In Granovetter's classic book, he emphasized the importance of maintaining an extended weak relationship network in order to obtain resources (information about potential jobs). From the entrepreneur's point of view, social capital provides a network, which helps to find entrepreneurial opportunities and determine, collect and allocate resources. Social capital also has a positive impact on the utilization of entrepreneurial opportunities by providing and disseminating key information and other important resources. Especially in China, social network, as a special entrepreneurial resource, often has an important impact on the acquisition and development of entrepreneurial opportunities.