Entrepreneurship Research on Intuition: A Critical Analysis and Research Agenda

Abstract

Intuition is a way of processing information that is largely unconscious, associative, fast and contextually dependent. As part of the growing cognition‐oriented research agenda in the entrepreneurship field, the specific cognitive construct of intuition has attracted relatively little attention. The authors find this position surprising, particularly since some entrepreneurship scholars have described intuition as the seed of entrepreneurial activity. This review examines the small but rapidly growing literature at the intersection of intuition and entrepreneurship. In critically analysing this body of work, the authors reveal a number of areas that warrant further attention if scholars wish to enhance academic understanding of the role of intuition in the entrepreneurial process. From this review, the authors develop an agenda to help guide scholars of entrepreneurial cognition with a specific interest in intuition in their future research. In doing so, they address a gap in the entrepreneurial cognition literature, which currently lacks a clear view of the value of entrepreneurship research on intuition and of how it should be conducted.