Pull the Plug or Take the Plunge: Multiple Opportunities and the Speed of Venturing Decisions in the Australian Mining Industry

Attention and Entrepreneurial Cognition

“…In contrast to firms that allocate attention toward later-stage development and exploitation, firms that focus more attention on earlier-stage exploration activities tend to heed information indicating the venture's upside potential or have the experience, operating procedures, or confidence needed to quickly advance a venture. My (Dean) colleague and I (Bakker and Shepherd 2017) showed that in the prospecting stage (i.e., the earliest venture-development stage), a greater orientation toward earlier-stage exploration activities enhances the speed by which managers decide about termination, but it diminishes the speed by which they make decisions about venture progression. Thus, having an attentional orientation toward earlier opportunityadvancement stages enables firms to make certain, but not necessarily all, decisions more rapidly.…”

“…To begin to overcome this lack of understanding, my (Dean) colleague and I (Bakker and Shepherd 2017) explored the vital role of attention in this context (Ocasio 1997). As discussed earlier, when faced with large and complex option sets, individuals are unable to dedicate full attention to all matters simultaneously; rather, they are likely to focus their attention on a restricted set of issues (Lavie et al 2010;Ocasio 2011).…”

Researching at the Intersection of Innovation, Operations Management, and Entrepreneurship

“…This selection process is critical because most organizations have more innovation projects than resources to fund them (Cooper et al, 2002) and because these selection decisions determine the composition of the organization's project portfolio (Behrens & Patzelt, 2017). In turn, portfolio composition has been found to influence (and reflect) business strategy (Bakker & Shepherd, 2017;Cooper et al, 2002), product innovation performance (Klingebiel & Rammer, 2014;van de Vrande, 2013), and-ultimately-firm performance (Salomo, Talke, & Strecker, 2008;Talke, Salomo, & Rost, 2010). The innovation process is typically represented by a number of stages (Urban & Hauser, 1993;Veryzer, 1998), for example, the stages of (1) idea generation, (2) preliminary assessment, (3) detailed assessment, (4) development, (5) validation, and (6) launch (Cooper & Kleinschmidt, 1993).…”

“…With each progressive stage, there is a greater need for resource investment. Each (larger) investment becomes less reversible but generally involves less uncertainty (Bakker & Shepherd, 2017;Burgelman, 1983;McGrath, 1999).…”

Researching Entrepreneurial Failures

“…Although these financial and/or attentional constraints could help determine the nature of the opportunity cost, it is important to understand how some are able to reduce these constraints and thus reduce the opportunity costs. This may involve making small investments and rapid terminations (Bakker & Shepherd, 2017;McGrath, 1999), using a conscious strategy to maintain slack (i.e., cognitive, financial, and time) resources not allocated to the current entrepreneurial endeavor (Bradley, Wiklund, & Shepherd, 2011;George, 2005), and using other means for structuring and/or "freeing up" attentional resources (Ocasio, 1997;Shepherd, McMullen, & Ocasio, 2017).…”