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Our study proposed and tested an entrepreneurial process model that examined the interrelationships among a small firm owner's personality, strategic orientation, and innovation. In the first part of the model, it was posited that a proactive personality would directly influence a prospector strategic orientation. This type of strategic orientation would then be a key factor in determining the type of innovations introduced and implemented within the business. Using a sample of 107 small business owners, results revealed that the prospector strategy orientation mediated the relationship between proactive personality and three types of innovations: innovative targeting processes, innovative organizational systems, and innovative boundary supports. Implications for small business managers as well as future research directions are discussed.
In recent years, models of the entrepreneurship process have evolved to depict the interactive nature of key variables influencing new venture success. Researchers have proposed that entrepreneurship can only be understood when the individual elements of the phenomenon are combined. Gartner (1985) was one of the first to propose that four major dimensions of entrepreneurship be integrated: the founder's characteristics, the organization's characteristics, the environment surrounding the firm, and the process by which the new venture is started. The attempt to form a more complex, multi-dimensional theory of the new venture process is not new. Historically, researchers have examined the individual traits of entrepreneurs, including the need for achievement (McClelland 1961), autonomy (Hornaday and Aboud 1971), tolerance for ambiguity (Sexton and Bowman 1984), and risk-taking propensity (Begley and Boyd 1986; Brockhaus 1980). A turning point occurred in the late 1980s, when Gartner (1989) defined entrepreneurship as a set of activities involved in the creation of an organization. Subsequently, research attention was redirected towards identifying the behaviors towards further understanding the influence of entrepreneurs' perceptions (Cooper, Woo, and Dunkelberg 1988) and their intentions (Bird 1988) on their behavior (Shaver and Scott 1991). Several behaviors have been found to influence small firm performance.
One of these behaviors is opportunity recognition, defined by Christensen, Masden, and Peterson (1989) as perceiving the possibility to create a new business or to significantly change or improve an existing business. Stevenson and Jarillo-Mossi (1986) suggested that entrepreneurs create value by combining resources to exploit an opportunity. Koller (1988) extended this by suggesting that most entrepreneurs...