Business Ideas and Mental Models: an exploratory qualitative study

Abstract

In the entrepreneurial process, the stage related to the generation of business ideas is important, however, there isn’t enough knowledge about it. Consequently, the objective of this communication is to explore how the structure of knowledge that people carry, influences in the conception of business ideas. Once given the objective to pursue, the theoretical perspective of the study comes from the mental models that through a quantitative study, help to identify how some variables are linked, and how they influence the generation of businesses ideas. The results indicate that there is no such a variable that influences considerably to form a business idea, at least in the sample of this study. The variable that shows an interesting behavior, since it is related to other independent variable, is the one of compensation and incentives. Nevertheless, it is convenient that for further studies, this variable is more deepley analyzed, by transforming it into the new variable of study.Key words: Entrepreneurs. Business ideas. Mental models. Innovation.