Title of this dissertation: The Entrepreneurs´ Prior Knowledge of Entrepreneurship.

Date of seminar: 2013-05-27

Course/Subject: Strategic innovation management, Technical project management, Master dissertation 15 hp

Authors: Malin Molin and Meron Goitom                           

Supervisor: Navid Ghannad

Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Knowledge in Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurial Knowledge, Entrepreneurial capital, Human capital, Qualitative study

Purpose: The purpose with this thesis is to describe which role the entrepreneur’s knowledge of entrepreneurship has played in the process from opportunity discovery to opportunity exploitation in innovative Swedish SME:s. The aim is to give a deeper understanding of what knowledge has been used by the entrepreneur in the process of development of the firm, to increase the understanding of how a person’s knowledge of entrepreneurship contributes to his or her entrepreneurial process, thus contributing to the field of research of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial knowledge.

Research method: We have chosen a qualitative case-study approach by conducting semi- structured interviews. Because of a large amount of prior research in divided fields within our research subject, we have mainly adopted a deductive approach.

Empirical study: Our empirical study has been performed on four companies; Rolling Optics, Peepoople Graphensic, and SensAbues. Through in-depth interviews with one of the founders from respective company.

Conclusion: We found a general shift from firstly knowledge tied close to the entrepreneur and knowledge concerning external environment of the company throughout the entrepreneurial process. We also noted a difference between companies, if the innovative product was born from a market perspective and market need or research perspective which later need to find an applicable market to the invention