Chapter 1: Systematic Search by Repeat Entrepreneurs

This research reports on interviews with repeat entrepreneurs for the purpose of exploring their use of systematic search as a way to identify discoveries. Received theory has held that entrepreneurs find discoveries primarily by being alert and that they do not find discoveries through searching. Because most researchers attempt to describe the behavior of ordinary entrepreneurs, and because no in-depth study has been conducted of repeat entrepreneurs to date, we hypothesized that it was quite possible that repeat entrepreneurs could approach the discovery process differently. We controlled for lucky discoveries by only studying entrepreneurs who had launched at least three successful ventures, which would have reduced the odds of their success due to luck to less than one percent. In fact, we found that every repeat entrepreneur in this study did narrow their search to correspond to areas where they already possessed prior, specific knowledge. None of them intimated that they relied on alertness to find discoveries. We discuss the implications of these findings for pedagogy as well as for future study.