Metacognition patterns - assessing how entrepreneurs think about their thinking

There are fast growing research interest and demands on exploring entrepreneurship in with lens of entrepreneurial cognition, in particle to investigate how do entrepreneurs think, reason and behave such that they create value and wealth through identifying and implementing market opportunities (Mitchell, 2007). Previous studies identify entrepreneurial and accounting students have distinctive metacognitive patterns (Brown, 2006). Entrepreneurial mindsets are critical to uncover metacognitive processes that enable entrepreneurs to think beyond and reorganize existing knowledge structures to promote adaptable cognitions during the process of entrepreneurship (Haynie et al, 2009). This working paper takes an important step toward understanding entrepreneurs' metacognition, by developing an instrument to measure metacognitive patterns in entrepreneurial context. After interviewing practicing entrepreneurs about their entrepreneurial experience, influential metacognitive patterns were identified. The findings provide the basis for constructing an instrument (MPIe) that can be used to identify potential entrepreneurs.