Entrepreneurs’ Cognitive Schemas and New Venture Business Model Innovativeness: The Mediating Effect of Environmental Scanning

Abstract

Sustainable innovation now plays a leading role in the transformation and upgrading activities of enterprises, and the new business model is increasingly a typical form of innovation. Therefore, based on neo-institutional theory of organization, this study mainly analyzes the impact of cognitive schemas on new ventures’ business model innovativeness by selecting new service industry enterprises as the research object and referring to data from the China Statistical Yearbook and “China Innovation and Entrepreneurship Index”. In addition, we entrusted professional market research companies and business incubators to collect 142 valid questionnaires. The results show that general cognitive schema negatively affects business model innovativeness, while specific cognitive schema positively affects it. Specifically, general cognitive schema reduces the level of effort and sustainability of entrepreneurial environmental scanning activities, which is not conducive to the design of highly innovative business models; specific cognitive schema not only improves the level of effort and sustainability of entrepreneurial environmental scanning activities, but also drives the entrepreneurs to pay more attention to new information outside the industry, which is conducive to the design of a highly innovative business model.