Study On The Relationship Among Entrepreneurial Alertness, Creative Thinking And Entrepreneurial Opportunity Identification

According to the13times reports published by GEM(Globe EntrepreneurshipMonitor),we know that entrepreneurship and efficiency is the source of nationaleconomic vitality. Entrepreneurial behavior has already made great achievement inpromoting economic growth and solving the employment problem. Especially sincethe financial crisis,the external environment are further turbulent,trade disputesoccur repeatedly,the global economic situation is not clear,how to identifyopportunities and threats which come from changes of environment effectively,makeappropriate reaction so that enterprises could have lasting competitive advantage is anurgent problem,This is also a recent key areas for Entrepreneurship researchers.Why some people can captur(eidentification)entrepreneurial opportunities in thechanging environment,and some people can't?In recent years,many scholars fromcognitive perspective discuss the reason about opportunity recognition differences,the results indicate that cognitive factors difference in individual levels are the keyelements which can distinguish entrepreneurs with common people．Cognitivecharacteristics of individual entrepreneurs as important cognitive factors play animportant role in the process of Entrepreneurial opportunity identification andproduce difference of entrepreneurial behavior finally. Entrepreneurial alertness as theimportant cognitive characteristics which can influence the opportunity recognitionhas attract numerous researchers' attention. The research about entrepreneurialalertness,we found out in literature,scholars research mainly focus on the following two aspects:Firstly,study on the effect of entrepreneurial alertness on entrepreneurialopportunity identification．By studying previous literature,we found that mostscholars focus on here, they study the effect of entrepreneurial alertness onentrepreneurial opportunity identification in the view of cognitive perspective andhave obtained great achievements: From the definition of the concept,composition ofentrepreneurial alertness and put forward the relationship between entrepreneurialalertness and opportunity recognition.Secondly, the inner mechanism between entrepreneurial alertness andentrepreneurial opportunity recognition．The theory of entrepreneurial alertness wellexplain the reason why entrepreneurs can easier recognize the opportunity thancommon people,but entrepreneurial alertness cannot explain how did the opportunityrecognition process happen．The theory of creative thinking fill the gap,throughintegrating,matching different types of information,it will transfer existed knowledgeinto the idea of novelty which can lead to entrepreneurial opportunityrecognition．Ward(2004)argued that the idea of novelty could be created by the peoplewho can do creative or bisociative thinking based on the existed businessknowledge．Stephen Ko and John E. Butle(r2003,2004,2006)did an empirical studyand proved that the inner mechanism between entrepreneurial alertness andentrepreneurial opportunities recognition,creative thinking as mediator variables.Although many scholars have studied the relationship between entrepreneurialalertness and entrepreneurial opportunities recognition,but the inner mechanismresearch is seldom involved．In this paper,firstly,we comb the relevant theory aboutentrepreneurial alertness, creative thinking and entrepreneurial opportunityidentification；secondly,we select domestic and international maturity scale,thirdly,we examine the direct impact on relations and mediate the relationship betweenvariables based on a sample of180of Jilin Province SME data. Data analysis resultsare as follows,entrepreneurial alertness has a positive effect on the entrepreneurialopportunity identification,entrepreneurial alertness has a positive effect on two dimensions of entrepreneurial opportunity identification；entrepreneurial alertness hasa positive effect on creative thinking；creative thinking has a positive effect onentrepreneurial opportunity recognition and its' two dimensions；creative thinking actas a mediator in the relationship between entrepreneurial alertness and entrepreneurialopportunities recognition and its' two dimensions.Through the acquisition of SMEs sample in Jilin Province and corrected analysisabout entrepreneurial alertness,creative thinking and entrepreneurial opportunityidentification,the paper enrich the theory of entrepreneurial cognition and furtherimprove the entrepreneurial theory, reveals the entrepreneurial nature. Forentrepreneurs, the grasp of mechanism between entrepreneurial alertness andopportunity identification can better identify entrepreneurial opportunities； forgovernment,the government can better develop targeted entrepreneurial educationand entrepreneurial support policies to guide the entrepreneurs to discoveropportunities,so as to improve the entrepreneurial atmosphere in Jilin province andpromote the healthy development of economy in Jilin province.