What if I do or I don’t, had or had not: The role of prefactual and counterfactual thinking in supporting entrepreneurial reasoning

Effective entrepreneurial reasoning, associated with successful venture creation and exit, has typically been ascribed to individuals’ prior experience and expertise. This study aims to open a new research trajectory and explore whether it can be fostered externally for any individual. Based on an experiment with non-experts, we demonstrate that activating a set of prefactual and counterfactual thoughts, unrelated to any domain-specific experience, helps individuals recognize opportunities, develop their ideas in greater depth, and apply effectuation-based logic in pursuing them. These findings have significant implications for our understanding of entrepreneurial behaviour and for creating ways in which it can be fostered. ?