ENTREPRENEURIAL COGNITION RESEARCH–AN UPDATE

In this chapter, we chart the historical evolution of entrepreneurial cognition research alongside broader developments in entrepreneurship and the cognitive sciences. We focus particularly on the emergence of a socially-situated approach to entrepreneurial cognition research which, we believe, can enable us to better understand how cognition exist in a broader context in a way that is influential to the experience of the entrepreneur. This socially-situated perspective views cognition as being distributed, embodied, situated and action-oriented. As we seek to demonstrate, this perspective can enable researchers to understand the mind of the entrepreneur in terms of its broader context. We highlight how a broader and more encompassing perspective of entrepreneurial cognition that is socially-situated in nature can enable other key conversations in entrepreneurship research to be understood in terms of cognition and to be seen as a fitting extension of the early work on cognition that is relevant to entrepreneurship.