Action-Before-Idea: Can Micro-Pursuit Create Opportunity Recognition?

Much research assumes opportunity recognition → intention → action. Yet Khanin et al. (2021) call attention to barriers that separate recognition from pursuit, while Fadhil et al. (2024) show social norms strengthen links among education, recognition, and intention. Rahim et al. (2021) further suggest self-regulated learning (SRL) enhances recognition via deliberate information-seeking. This project challenges the norm by experimentally inverting the sequence: we randomize participants into “act-first” micro-pursuit (e.g., run 3 real customer tests in a week) versus “recognize-first” ideation/analysis, with and without social-norm primes (per Fadhil et al., 2024). We theorize that action sparks entrepreneurial alertness and passion (Zhu et al., 2024), which in turn crystallize recognition ex post. A postpositivist lens (Karatas‑Ozkan et al., 2014) legitimizes examining emergent, iterative causality rather than linear pipelines. Outcomes include validated measures of opportunity recognition quality (adapting Viswanath et al., 2024, for social opportunities), behavioral metrics (customer responses), and SRL behaviors (Rahim et al., 2021). If micro-pursuit reliably produces recognition, we’ll have strong evidence to reframe entrepreneurship education and accelerators around “doing-to-see,” not “seeing-to-do.”

References:

1. Impact of Self-Regulated Learning on Entrepreneurial Opportunity Recognition and Academic Entrepreneurship Performance. Noorlizawati Abd Rahim, Z. Mohamed, A. Amrin, M. Masrom (2021).
2. Understanding Entrepreneurship: Challenging Dominant Perspectives and Theorizing Entrepreneurship through New Postpositivist Epistemologies. Mine Karatas‐Ozkan, Alistair R. Anderson, A. Fayolle, J. Howells, R. Condor (2014).
3. Social Norm as a Moderating Variable on the Influence of Opportunity Recognition and Entrepreneurship Education on Students’ Entrepreneurial Intention. Rahmat Fadhil, Hendra Halim, Novindra Novindra (2024). Prosiding Seminar Nasional Forum Manajemen Indonesia - e-ISSN 3026-4499.
4. Barriers to entrepreneurship: opportunity recognition vs. opportunity pursuit. D. Khanin, R. Rosenfield, Raj V. Mahto, C. Singhal (2021). Reviews of Management Sciences.
5. Social entrepreneurial opportunity recognition among higher education students: scale development and validation. Parvathy Viswanath, Sadananda Reddy Annapally, Aneesh Kumar (2024). Social Enterprise Journal.
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.