Mirror neurons and neuroplasticity: The dyadic neurological foundations bridging entrepreneur-level and enterprise-level capabilities

Abstract

The paper bridges the contours of neuroscience and entrepreneurship to unveil the neuronal path to transfigure entrepreneur-level capabilities into enterprise-level capabilities without holding a priori assumptions about serendipity or application of the aggregation principle. It reveals that neural mechanisms through which efforts of entrepreneurs are aggregated and exploited at the enterprise level—mirror neuron system and neuroplasticity—do not represent a fortuity, but conscious endeavors on the parts of both entrepreneurs and the enterprise to bridge these distances. In doing so, this paper explains how the brains of various entrepreneurial actors can be trained like muscles, and how they can achieve bio-behavioral synchrony to facilitate such neurochemical changes in their brain wiring that induce cognitive, affective, and conative aspects of opportunity identification, opportunity exploitation, and successful reconfiguration, which are essential for an entrepreneurial brain. Moreover, the paper demonstrates how mirror neuron system can become the gateway to neuroplasticity and how this cross-modal matching can assist entrepreneurial actors in developing their capabilities. The conceptual framework proposed explains how entrepreneurial actors, and consequently, the enterprise, can move towards a more plastic mode of operation, one that helps disrupt the brain's homeostasis to achieve enterprise plasticity, and ultimately develop robust enterprise-level capabilities.