From the expertise of the entrepreneur to the distributed expertise: a cognitive approach to decision making for innovation in high technology SMEs
The purpose of this research is to analyze the cognitive approach of the entrepreneur during the decision making process in high technology SMEs. In this type of company, entrepreneurs qualified as experts would tend to mobilize the logic of effectuation in the entrepreneurial process. The question of the combination of expertise centered on technique and the logic of effectuation then arises. We analyze this question by crossing two complementary theoretical frameworks: the logic of effectuation and the notion of expertise from the educational sciences. If the literature has shown the effect of technical expertise in problem solving, we hypothesize that it also structures the predictive activities of decision making and thus entrepreneurial expertise. This research is supported by a participatory action research methodology carried out over 30 months in a high-tech competitiveness cluster and tends to empirically validate the relevance of the two conceptual grids used. Our results highlight, on the one hand, the effect of the entrepreneur’s metacognitive activity in the decision-making process and, on the other hand, the constitution of an organization, centered on cognition, capable of supporting entrepreneurial expertise by securing decision making. The major contribution of this article lies in the revision of the concept of expertise not only as a resource but also as a cognitive process bringing a structuring dimension to entrepreneurial expertise.