Mental Modeling of Entrepreneurial Opportunity Based on the Principle of Information Visualization

Abstract

What arouses entrepreneurial action? The role of entrepreneurial opportunities in stimulating entrepreneurial action under uncertainty is a subject of intense scholarly debate. This article engages in a crucial theoretical exploration to extend the boundaries of opportunity by reframing it as an artifact. Reframing the opportunity as an artifact (crystallized information) shifts the dialogue and perspectives. Through information visualization and mental modeling approaches, information is aggregated, integrated, and configured to generate an experience that triggers actions. The interaction, transformation, and representation of information are intended to reduce uncertainty and guide entrepreneurial enactment. This article presents an integrated information processing model showing how information excites, instigates, and motivates enactment. This contextualization aims to develop a descriptively accurate and prescriptively useful concept of opportunity as an artifact. Theoretically, analytically, and conceptually, the focus on information as the fundamental unit of analysis shifts the discussion by featuring inward to move the scholarly debate on opportunity forward. This re-pivoting can avoid the calls for abandonment and debunking of the opportunity construct.