Do we all see the same future? Entrepreneurial team members' visions and opportunity development

Drawing on longitudinal case studies of eleven entrepreneurial teams, this study explores how entrepreneurial team members’ vision congruence imprints the development of young ventures. Different opportunity development paths emerged from the data depending on vision congruence or incongruence in the teams: If all team members held congruent visions (i.e. the same mental image of the venture’s future) they tended to follow a myopic view opportunity development path characterized by a continuous, straight forward process. In contrast, if team members held incongruent visions (i.e. at least one different image of the venture’s future) they tended to pursue a panorama view opportunity development path characterized by proactiveness, radical changes, and open-minded discussions. Both paths could lead to high or low venture performance, but our data revealed that venture outcomes were contingent on the team’s decision making: Teams could capitalize on a myopic opportunity development when they showed low level...