The impact of entrepreneurs’ cognitive flexibility on the business performance of New Ventures: an empirical study based on Chinese New Ventures

We developed a “thinking-behavior-outcome” logical framework to explore the effect of entrepreneurs’ cognitive flexibility on dual innovation and the performance of new ventures, drawing on social cognitive theory, and collected data from a sample of 293 new ventures through a questionnaire to conduct an empirical analysis. We find that entrepreneurs’ cognitive flexibility may indirectly affect the performance of new ventures by influencing their dual innovation activities; resource management capabilities positively moderate the relationship between entrepreneurs’ cognitive flexibility and dual innovation. In addition, our study demonstrates that dual innovation equilibrium has a stronger effect on the performance of new ventures than single-dimensional innovation activities. Our study highlights the importance of entrepreneurial cognitive flexibility for new ventures to implement innovation strategies and improve performance. The findings not only help to clarify the relationship between entrepreneurs’ cognitive flexibility and new venture performance and to enrich social cognitive theory, but they also provide new perspectives on responses to enhance dual innovation capabilities of new ventures under the influence of COVID-19. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-022-03532-x.