Prototype Perturbation with AI: Training Minds to Recognize Non-Obvious Opportunities

Cognitive work on prototypes and category recombination (Costa et al., 2017; Braun, 2009) suggests that reconfiguring mental categories can spark new ideas. Sadler‑Smith (2016) highlights intuition’s role in entrepreneurial decisions, and Zhu et al. (2024) link passion to alertness and recognition in dynamic environments. We propose a training protocol where entrepreneurs iteratively “perturb” category prototypes (e.g., take canonical features of a restaurant and algorithmically mutate them via generative AI) and then evaluate AI-suggested recombinations against real micro-datasets (DT context per Kreuzer et al., 2022). Because intense ideation can increase anxiety, we integrate an affect regulation module inspired by Dang (2024)’s cognitive interaction model to sustain productive emotional states. We will measure changes in opportunity recognition quality using domain-agnostic rubrics and adapt Viswanath et al. (2024)’s validated scale for social opportunities. The novelty is a tightly coupled cognitive-affective-AI curriculum that operationalizes category-level creativity while maintaining alertness and emotional bandwidth. If effective, this yields a scalable pedagogy for accelerators and SEE programs (Diepolder et al., 2024) that systematically improves recognition beyond unstructured brainstorming.

References:

1. The Effects of Digital Technology on Opportunity Recognition. Thomas M. Kreuzer, Anna-Katharina Lindenthal, Anna Oberländer, Maximilian Röglinger (2022). Business & Information Systems Engineering.
2. Social entrepreneurial opportunity recognition among higher education students: scale development and validation. Parvathy Viswanath, Sadananda Reddy Annapally, Aneesh Kumar (2024). Social Enterprise Journal.
3. The role of intuition in entrepreneurship and business venturing decisions. E. Sadler‐Smith (2016).
4. Connecting the literature dots: A literature review on prototypes in entrepreneurship research. Sílvia Costa, A. Caetano, Arjan J. Frederiks, S. Santos (2017).
5. Generating New Business Ideas: The Ability of Category Combination and Reorganization. R. Braun (2009).
6. Entrepreneurial passion, alertness and opportunity recognition: Affective-cognitive interactions in dynamic environments. Fei Zhu, Samuel Adomako, Francis Donbesuur, Mujtaba Ahsan, Rachel S. Shinnar, Arash (Ash) Sadeghi (2024). International Small Business Journal.
7. A Study on Coping with the Psychology of Employment and Entrepreneurship Stress among College Students under the Cognitive Interaction Model (CIM). Xiling Dang (2024). Applied Mathematics and Nonlinear Sciences.
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