Abstract
Up until now, entrepreneurship study has not developed a unified theory
with key concepts that can elucidate the holistically process-driven
characteristics of entrepreneurial venturing. What spur entrepreneurs to
action along the process-driven pathway? This paper intends to relate
the business of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial actions and
activities to thermodynamic and energy gradient-manipulation mechanism.
Taking entrepreneurial venturing from a process view and in an attempt
to reconstruct the entrepreneurial process by illustrating a range of
relevant perspectives from energy gradients in naturally occurring
chemical , biological and physical systems basing on interpretive and
phenomenological, social constructionist angle; this paper hopes to pull
together a unifying theory on action-based activities in entrepreneurial
venturing with thermodynamic concepts and expressions with
gradient-manipulation mechanism to explain the entrepreneurial
action-motion phenomena. The gradient-manipulating mechanism and
thermodynamic expressions thus become the “nature” invisible hand that
operates the motion of actions. Kirzner’s theory of entrepreneurship
explains the coordination of markets and of knowledge. It is that
knowledge, the recognition of the opportunities in the actual imperfect
markets that triggers the gradient-manipulation mechanism.