This research draws from the extant literature to identify the individual components of strategic thinking, a construct, and uses established measures for each of the components to investigate if entrepreneurs with higher levels of performance possess greater ability for strategic thinking. The strategic thinking questionnaire, a self-report instrument containing 21 questions and measuring three components—systems thinking, reframing, and reflection— (based on factor analysis) is administered to the people who provide mentoring support to new entrepreneurs. Multivariate analysis of variance has been used to test the differences among the two factors—status (entrepreneur vs. professional) and performance (high vs. low)—with respect to the three components in the questionnaire. The findings show that strategic thinking is an intrinsic characteristic of high performing entrepreneurs with respect to all three dimensions. Furthermore, high performing entrepreneurs evince greater ability for strategic thinking than high performing professionals. The study provides practitioners and researchers a framework of strategic thinking for identifying potential high performing entrepreneurs.

Cognition is the way we use mental skills to acquire knowledge, manipulate ideas, and process new information and belief (Pisapia et al., 2009). According to Baron and Ward (2010), certain important issues like whether entrepreneurs prefer heuristic thinking to reflection and analysis, and have greater ability than others in applying knowledge structures to a wide range of situations and in recognizing complex patterns and ‘connecting the dots’, have not yet been investigated in the field of entrepreneurial cognition.

Grégoire et al. (2011) content-analyzed entrepreneurship cognitive articles between 1976 and 2008 and stated that cognitive research has a dominant focus on the consequences of cognitive variables primarily articulated as differences between individuals, and a potential exists for disentangling the various antecedents of entrepreneurial cognition. The authors stated, “We encourage future research to pay attention not only to the consequences of relevant cognitive variables, but also to the origins and development of such variables. To this aim, we call for scholars to distinguish between cognitive factors that predate entrepreneurial action and factors that proceed from the immediate circumstances of that action and to study these distinctions specifically.”

Entrepreneurship Development Journal, Strategic Thinking, Differentiator, Systems Thinking, Reflection, Reframing, Yuva Shakti Trust (BYST), Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA), Entrepreneurial Cognition.