چگونگی تبدیل شدن به یک کارآفرین عالی: اثر متناوب تمایل به ریسک برای هوشیاری به ایده های تجاری و قابلیت های  کارآفرینی  How to become an excellent entrepreneur: The moderating effect of risk propensity on alertness to business  ideas and entrepreneurial capabilities

1. Introduction The concept of alertness to business ideas as one of the most prominent influential factors of entrepreneurial capabilities is still underdeveloped. Besides, risk propensity can exert influence on the value and performance of human capital (Kirzner, 1997; Markman and Baron, 2003; Busenitz and Barney, 1997; Jiao et al., 2013). When an entrepreneur’s alertness to business ideas is vague or low, his entrepreneurial capabilities contribute to low entrepreneurial performance (Kaish and Gilad, 1991; Gaglio and Katz, 2001). In fact, entrepreneurs have been found to have different degrees of alertness to business ideas, which could be inherited or acquired (Alvarez and Busenitz, 2001; Shane and Venkataraman, 2000; Iyer, 2016). Little empirical research has been done on the effect of alertness to business ideas on entrepreneurial capabilities. More recently, researchers have noticed that risk propensity may affect the result of an entrepreneur’s entrepreneurial performance (Sitkin and Pablo, 1992; Forlani and Mullins, 2000; Stewart and Roth, 2001). Although informative, this stream of research fails to answer these important questions: how does alertness to business ideas affect entrepreneurial capabilities? What is the role of an entrepreneur’s risk propensity in the relationship of alertness to business ideas and entrepreneurial capabilities? We seek to answer these questions by examining how alertness to business ideas affect entrepreneurial capabilities, which are composed of four factors, such as autonomy, innovation, risk-taking, and proactiveness. Moreover, we examine the moderating effect of risk propensity on alertness to business ideas and entrepreneurial capabilities. In particular, we hypothesize that alertness to business ideas can positively affect entrepreneurial capabilities. When an entrepreneur has a high degree of alertness to business ideas, he/she also has a high degree of entrepreneurial capabilities. In contrast, when an entrepreneur has a low degree of alertness to business ideas, he/she is not sensitive to entrepreneurial opportunities, and has a low degree of entrepreneurial capabilities. Furthermore, we hypothesize that an entrepreneur’s risk propensity plays a moderating role on the relationship of alertness to business ideas and entrepreneurial capabilities. We provide empirical support for the above hypotheses using data from a large sample survey in China. We adopt a quantitative research method based on questionnaire surveys on different kinds of enterprises in China.