How does entrepreneurial experience shape decision-making and cognitive flexibility?

Entrepreneurs evolve in an environment requiring cognitive flexibility— the ability to adapt to new and changing situations— and decision-making under uncertainty. Especially, they often have to choose between exploring new options or exploiting already known ones. This kind of decision is underpinned by cognitive flexibility abilities. Recent studies evidenced that higher cognitive flexibility in experienced entrepreneurs is associated with differences in brain structure and function compared with managers. However, whether this heightened cognitive flexibility is an inherent trait of entrepreneurs or develops through experience remains unclear. This work aims to investigate if entrepreneurial experience modifies decision-making strategies through the evolution of cognitive flexibility abilities. The study will involve 90 entrepreneurs at various career stages and 30 employees without entrepreneurial experience, who will perform cognitive tasks assessing decision-making and cognitive flexibility. Decision-making strategies will be evaluated using a two-armed bandit task designed to manipulate novelty and uncertainty of stimuli, addressing exploration-exploitation strategies. We hypothesize that decision-making strategies evolve with entrepreneurial experience, with more experienced entrepreneurs exhibiting greater exploratory behaviour. We propose that this effect is mediated by an increase in cognitive flexibility associated with entrepreneurial experience. By disentangling the effects of entrepreneurial experience on decision-making under uncertainty, this study will provide insights into the influence of specific environments on decision-making and cognitive flexibility—key prerequisites for success in today’s information-rich world.