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An entrepreneur conceptualizes and rationalizes the creation of the new enterprise through the use of inductive analogical or metaphorical reasoning. Such reasoning sets the stage for commercialization of the enterprise and helps clarify its purpose and justification particularly in the face of adverse environmental contexts. After providing a review of literature on creation of a new enterprise, sensemaking and inductive reasoning, we use a narrative case study methodology to present the story of a small enterprise located in Peshawar Pakistan. Through the perspective of a female entrepreneur interpretations and details of her work, her struggles and her views about her enterprise are provided. By presenting this case we argue that inductive reasoning by the entrepreneur is shaped by three determinants. These include conceptualizing the opportunity through a narrative on the wider norms and values of the society and the entrepreneur's role within the society. Secondly, rationalizing the opportunity through a narration of personal life and events before and after the enterprise was created. Thirdly, using analogies or metaphors in the form of drivers influencing the new enterprise and how the entrepreneur has or is managing them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on entrepreneurial sensemaking with an emphasis on cognitive mechanisms utilized by entrepreneurs during business opportunity development. More specifically the focus is to find out how an individual entrepreneur may assign meaning to important cues derived from innumerable unending events, interpret these cues and then take actions as per interpretations of these cues and events. These cues can be cognitively conceptualized as drivers and barriers through which the entrepreneur makes sense of his or her enterprise and the opportunities it may offer. Using a narrative case study approach this paper relies on inductive reasoning of a single female entrepreneur. A three-tiered and six-dimensional framework of entrepreneurial sensemaking has been presented. The cognitive mechanisms employed by the entrepreneur were presented in the form of cues, events and their interpretations by the entrepreneur resulting in a unique perspective on sensemaking. This paper is particularly useful because even though the use of sensemaking in entrepreneurship research has been well-recognized there is a general lack of empirical work on how an entrepreneur uses socially situated cognitive mechanisms to proceed further in terms of offering a better understanding of his or her new enterprise to others within any social or cultural setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]