英语论文网

rticipants were successful environmental entrepreneurs in Ohio with greater than ten years experience, those that are still in the same science-related business they founded, and those that have operated their businesses profitably for, at least, the last five years. This definition serves to create a participant group of Ohio's environmental scientists-turned-entrepreneurs that can contribute meaning to the new scientific venture creation process.

A series of cooperative personal interviews followed the completion of a prequalification questionnaire designed to determine that the participant could answer the research question in a meaningful manner. The rationale for using an interview approach is because interviews capture a multitude of views about a theme in a manifold social perspective (Kvale, 1996). Moreover, direct observation of the participant during the conversation allowed for a better assessment of the essence of the lived experience, consistent with van Manen's (1990) perspective. The objective was to extrapolate and present emergent themes representative of the phenomenon.

Emergent themes represent a grouping of elements that are unique to the participant group and relate across the expressed dialogue of the collective. The interviews of 20 participants present themes via the analysis of over 200 pages and 3,000 lines of transcribed text. Although many elements are expressed and are given equal weight, certain elements represent themes that emerged from the research conducted. Some of these themes represent viewpoints given by only a few of the participants while others are more pervasive across the data set. Irrespective of the frequency cited, themes are presented so that a thorough and inclusionary representation of the triggers and motivations can be understood.

Triangulation was used to minimize researcher bias, expose missing themes, and confirm the thematic representations. This is consistent with Miles and Huberman's (1994, p. 266) suggestion that triangulation is, “... used to show that independent measures agree or, at least, do not contradict each other.” The themes presented in this section were checked using peer review or, according to Denzin (1978), researcher triangulation. After application of pseudonyms to assure confidentiality, a colleague, who was not a part of the data set or involved with the data acquisition, evaluated the thematic representations to consider alternative meanings or additional themes. This is consistent with Creswell and Miller (2000, p. 126) where, “...researchers search for convergence among multiple and different sources of information to form themes or categories in a study.” This mode of triangulation assists with data validity and credible data reduction.

FINDINGS: EMERGENT THEMES IN THE ENTREPRENEURIAL EXPERIENCE

Emergent themes are extracted from the expressions in the participants' statements. These emergent themes are taken from questions designed to isolate certain moments of clarity or lessons learned by the participant that best describe the essence of the triggers and motivations leading to the new venture creation process. Moreover, emergent themes assist with the categorization of the experience so that others may understand the meaning inherent in the statements of ideas expressed (Patton, 2002). The data presents an eclectic and diverse representation of triggers and motivations in the new