Entrepreneurial Strategy

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

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2. Attending to the External Environment to Identify Potential Opportunities

   • Dean A. Shepherd, Holger Patzelt

   Pages 1-25Open Access

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3. Co-constructing an Opportunity with a Community of Inquiry

   • Dean A. Shepherd, Holger Patzelt

   Pages 27-50Open Access

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4. A Lean Framework for Starting a New Venture

   • Dean A. Shepherd, Holger Patzelt

   Pages 51-71Open Access

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5. Managing New Ventures

   • Dean A. Shepherd, Holger Patzelt

   Pages 73-99Open Access

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6. Scaling New Ventures

   • Dean A. Shepherd, Holger Patzelt

   Pages 101-117Open Access

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7. Back Matter

   Pages 119-131

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This open access book focuses on explaining differences amongst organizations regarding various attributes, forms, and outcomes. By focusing on the “how” of new venture creation and management to produce well-established organizations, the authors aim to increase our understanding of the antecedents of most management research assumptions. New ventures are the source of most newly created jobs generated in an economy, new industries and markets, innovative products and services, and new solutions to economic, social, and environmental problems. However, most management research assumes a well-established organization as the starting point of their theorizing.



Building on the notion of guided attention, it details how entrepreneurs can allocate their transient attention to identify potential opportunities from environmental change and how entrepreneurs allocate their sustained attention to form beliefs about radical and incremental opportunities requiring entrepreneurial action. The authors explain how entrepreneurs build such communities and engage community members over time to co-construct potential opportunities for new venture progress.  Using the lean startup framework, they connect the dots between the theorizing on identifying and co-constructing potential opportunities and the startup of new ventures. This leads to a new overarching framework based on are (1) co-creating a startup, (2) organizing a startup, and (3) performing a startup to bring together the many disparate threads of research on new ventures. The authors then theorize on the importance of knowledge in organizational scaling. 

Based on cutting-edge research from the leading entrepreneurship journals, this book expands knowledge on the cognitive aspect of the new venture creation process.

• Open Access
• Entrepreneurship
• New Ventures
• New Venture Creation
• Startup
• Lean Startup
• Opportunity Co-Construction
• Scaling
• entrepreneur
• opportunity
• founder
• entrepreneurial team
• entrepreneurial cognition

“The book highlights new insights … . Relevant industry examples are provided and engaging, and complement the theoretical arguments presented by the authors. Overall, the book is grounded in contemporary research which pushes the knowledge frontiers to the entrepreneurial journey of start-ups. It makes an excellent read for budding as well as veteran social sciences and has some elements which may be of interest to practitioners as well … .” (Radha Vyas, International Small Business Journal ISBJ, May 13, 2022)

• Management and Organization, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, USA

  Dean A. Shepherd

• Entrepreneurship Research Institute, Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany

  Holger Patzelt

Dean A. Shepherd is the Ray and Milann Siegfried Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Mendoza College of Business, Notre Dame University, USA. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Business Venturing and has published over 130 scholarly journal articles and 19 books.


Holger Patzelt is Chair in Entrepreneurship at the School of Management, Technical University of Munich, Germany. His research interests include entrepreneurial cognition and economic, emotional and psychological consequences of failure.​

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