New venture creation and the development of entrepreneurial cognition: A longitudinal analysis of startup diaries

Sensemaking describes how actors fill in a meaning void whereas sensebreaking deals with the process of creating that void by disrupting current understandings of individuals. Over a period of one year we followed 30 entrepreneurs engaged in new venture building. Applying the concept of sensebreaking, we analyzed the influence of crucial stakeholders on their entrepreneurial cognition using the real-time, longitudinal data set of weekly diary entries we collected. The examination of 7200 distinct units of analysis revealed 115 sensebreaking instances. We show how sensebreaking initiated by specific stakeholders aids novel sensemaking via three possible mechanisms: questioning, reframing and redirecting. We contribute to the micro-level foundations of entrepreneurial cognition empirically demonstrating that it is socially situated. We shed new light on entrepreneurial opportunity developed in concert with stakeholders during the early stages of a new venture."