Modes of thought in entrepreneurial intention studies: a collective intelligence perspective

The concept of collective intelligence supports the notion that the coexistence of different perspectives is a necessary condition for a complex system to adapt to the environment and to keep its vitality. Transposing this assumption to a scientific community, we investigate the field of entrepreneurial intention studies and examine its internal dynamics by identifying the relevant practices to conduct research. Specifically, we conduct a hybrid bibliometric analysis to discover 68 articles constituting the field’s knowledge base and 83 articles representing its research fronts. This analysis is completed by an analytical coding of each paper according to the collective intelligence framework proposed by Woolley and Fuchs (2011). We find both a convergent and a divergent perspective; the former oriented to clarifying and bounding concepts, theories, and contexts; the latter interested in opening new paths. However, a reflective perspective that calls into question the field’s assumptions to reformulate directions and general purposes is still lacking. Our results suggest a set of priorities to be taken into account in the interest of driving future research.