Alan L. Carsrud & Malin Brännback 
Understanding the Entrepreneurial Mind 
Opening the Black Box

Interest in the functioning of the human mind can certainly be traced to Plato and Aristotle who often dealt with issues of perceptions and motivations. While the Greeks may have contemplated the human condition, the modern study of the human mind can be traced back to Sigmund Freud (1900) and the psychoanalytic movement. He began the exploration of both conscious and unconscious factors that propelled humans to engage in a variety of behaviors. While Freud’s focus may have been on repressed sexuality our focus in this volume lies elsewhere. We are concerned herein with the expression of the cognitions, motivations, passions, intentions, perceptions, and emotions associated with entrepreneurial behaviors. We are attempting in this volume to expand on the work of why entrepreneurs think d- ferently from other people (Baron, 1998, 2004). During the decade of the 1990s the eld of entrepreneurship research seemingly abandoned the study of the entrepreneur. This was the result of earlier research not being able to demonstrate some unique entrepreneurial personality, trait, or char- teristic (Brockhaus and Horwitz, 1986). It was both a naïve and simplistic search for the “holy grail” of what made entrepreneurs the way they are. However, many of the researchers in this volume have never gave up the belief that a better und- standing of the mind of the entrepreneur would give us a better understanding of the processes that lead to the creation of new ventures.

Table of Content

Entrepreneurial Perceptions and Intentions.- Perceptions – Looking at the World Through Entrepreneurial Lenses.- Toward A Contextual Model of Entrepreneurial Intentions.- An “Informed” Intent Model: Incorporating Human Capital, Social Capital, and Gender Variables into the Theoretical Model of Entrepreneurial Intentions.- Entrepreneurial Intentions are Dead: Long Live Entrepreneurial Intentions.- Cognitive Maps and Entrepreneurial Scripts.- Cognitive Maps in Entrepreneurship: Researching Sense Making and Action.- Entrepreneurial Scripts and Entrepreneurial Expertise: The Information Processing Perspective.- Motivations, Emotions, and Entrepreneurial Passion.- Motivations: The Entrepreneurial Mind and Behavior.- The Role of Emotions and Cognitions in Entrepreneurial Decision-Making.- Collective Passion in Entrepreneurial Teams.- Attributions, Self-Efficacy, and Locus of Control.- Why? Attributions About and by Entrepreneurs.- Self-Efficacy: Conditioning the Entrepreneurial Mindset.- Perceptions of Efficacy, Control, and Risk: A Theory of Mixed Control.- Beyond Cognitions: From Thinking and Opportunity Alertness and Opportunity Identification to Behaving.- Entrepreneurial Decision-Making: Thinking Under Uncertainty.- Entrepreneurial Alertness and Opportunity Identification: Where Are We Now?.- Entrepreneurial Behavior: Its Nature, Scope, Recent Research, and Agenda for Future Research.