Keynote VHB TIE Conference on „Situated cognition & boundary options in entrepreneurship research“ at Technical University in Denmark, Copenhagen.
Situated cognition is the notion that cognitive activity inherently involves perception and action in the context of a human body situated in a real-world environment. The review concentrates on three areas of the situated cognition literature that have significant implications for research in entrepreneurial cognition: embedded, grounded and distributed cognition. While these three aspects of cognition differ in terms of foci and core theses, they share the
common emphasis of viewing and investigating cognitive processes by going beyond the individual mind and paying attention to the human body, (material) objects and other people. Furthermore, we activate the concept of entrepreneurial opportunity, asking the critical question of ‘what do entrepreneurs do with opportunities?’ This fresh perspective takes the concept of opportunity into two important new directions of interaction and learning. We argue that one of the active roles of an entrepreneur is to objectify an opportunity, articulating it in concrete boundary object form to facilitate interaction with a range of stakeholders. Doing so starts a cycle of co-participative learning, by which entrepreneurs and stakeholders reflect on and transform boundary objects that embody an entrepreneurial opportunity. In the process, opportunity takes an actionable shape that advances the creation of a new venture, while simultaneously advancing the entrepreneur’s understanding of how new ventures come to be.