Linking Experience to Intuition and Cognitive Versatility in New Venture Ideation: A Dual‐Process Perspective

As many high‐profile business leaders purport to make decisions based on gut feelings, a growing number of management scholars are seeking to explain how leaders use intuition in organizational settings. In line with dual‐process theories, management scholars argue that the most effective decision makers are cognitively versatile, which means that they are able to ‘switch cognitive gears’ between intuition and analysis and, more importantly, that they are able to use both types of processing at high levels. Although this has important implications, the actual use of intuition as well as cognitive versatility have received limited scholarly attention. Motivated by the desire to address this gap, we pose the following research question: To what extent is experience associated with a) intuition and b) cognitive versatility, and with what effects? We consider the influence of domain‐specific experience because this is considered to be a prerequisite for intuition, and we explore the effects in the context of new venture ideation which is a precursor to and the lifeblood of entrepreneurial action, not only for founders of new ventures but also for managers of existing organizations who seek to drive innovation and be entrepreneurial. We build on insights from the dual‐process Cognitive‐Experiential Self‐Theory, as well as the literature on managerial and entrepreneurial intuition, to develop a conceptual model, which we test on data collected from 74 technology‐entrepreneurs via think‐aloud protocol analysis and an online survey. We find that experienced entrepreneurs are able to use both intuition and analysis extensively during new venture ideation, and that the use of intuition is most effective for new venture ideation when used together with analysis – both at high levels – in a cognitively versatile strategy.