The 'lessons' of entrepreneurial experience: toward identifying critical development 'lessons'

This paper uses insights from cognitive developmental psychology, constructivism and social neuroscience to move beyond entrepreneurial intentions to explore deeply-held beliefs associated with entrepreneurial thinking. From those insights, we propose identifying those developmental experiences ('lessons') that are the sources of those critical deep beliefs that are intrinsic to our mental models regarding entrepreneurship: How we construct opportunities and, perhaps more important, how we learn to perceive ourselves as entrepreneurs. This paper addresses the nature of beliefs from a social neuroscience perspective, the constructivist learning model, theory and recent evidence from cognitive developmental psychology, and a look at a key phenomenon that reflects deep entrepreneurial beliefs, entrepreneurial role identity.