Chemotaxis and the Mechanism of Gradient Sensing in Entrepreneurial Actions

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is about discovery and creation. These two theories shape the discussions on how entrepreneurial opportunities are formed and have important implications for a wide array of entrepreneurial actions in different contexts. Entrepreneurial actions are predicated on profit motives. Entrepreneurs’ purposeful movement and motion acting in response to opportunities to derive profits share similar behaviours with bacterial or cell chemotaxis. Chemotaxis is the cell’s response mechanism by sensing and swimming to chemicals such as nutrients. Their pathway selections are a result of remarkable sensing and signalling properties in the mechanism. Approaches in information theory and stochastic thermodynamics can explain how pathway selections are processed from environmental stimuli. Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial pathways can be studied from these theoretical advances pivoting on information theory and thermodynamics. Opportunity-stimulated entrepreneurial action apparently operates by a set of sensing criteria from the profit-sensing mechanism. Any venture outcome is a function of the entrepreneurs’ sensitivity to opportunity and the robustness and intensity of subsequent entrepreneurial actions. Gradients and the state of nonequilibrium play a big part in the motion and entrepreneurial actions since it is the gradient-sensing in heterogeneities caused by the disequilibrium that result in opportunistic exploitation by the entrepreneurs.