Past Experience, Cognitive Frames, and Entrepreneurship: Some Econometric Evidencefrom the Indian Pharmaceutical Industry

The theoretical literature identifies three important entrepreneurial dimensions,namely discovering new opportunities, responsiveness to uncertainty, and coordination of a firm.In the empirical literature, past experience has been identified as having an important influenceon organizational behavior. This literature, however, focuses predominantly on the impact ofexperience on new opportunities using a resource-based view and human capital perspective. Incontrast, we draw upon the cognitive science literature to argue that past experience shapes anentrepreneur’s cognitive frame, and, hence, influences entrepreneurship in a more holisticmanner. We provide econometric evidence of the impact of past experience on all threeentrepreneurial dimensions from the small scale Indian pharmaceutical enterprises...