Entrepreneurial Opportunity and Venture Thesis

Introduction

A business plan is not merely a description of a proposed enterprise. It is an argument that a meaningful problem exists, that a specific group of customers experiences it sufficiently intensely, that a feasible solution can create value, and that the founding team is capable of developing and delivering that solution. The foundation of this argument is the venture thesis.

An entrepreneurial opportunity is more than an interesting idea. An idea becomes an opportunity when it connects a recognized problem or unmet need with a feasible means of creating and capturing value under particular market, technological, institutional, and resource conditions. Opportunity analysis therefore precedes detailed financial forecasting. If the problem is weakly understood or the customer is incorrectly identified, polished projections cannot rescue the venture.

This chapter integrates five perspectives useful for developing an opportunity and venture thesis:

• opportunity recognition, which explains how entrepreneurs identify and evaluate possibilities;
• causation, which emphasizes goals, planning, prediction, and resource allocation;
• effectuation, which emphasizes available means, experimentation, partnerships, and control under uncertainty;
• design thinking, which provides a human-centred process for understanding and solving customer problems; and
• theory of change, which connects venture activities to outputs, outcomes, and broader impact.

Together, these perspectives help the entrepreneur move from “I have an idea” to a defensible statement of why this venture should exist and how it can produce value.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter, students should be able to:

1. Distinguish an idea, a problem, a need, and an entrepreneurial opportunity.
2. Apply causation and effectuation appropriately in different venture conditions.
3. Use design-thinking methods to investigate customer needs and develop solutions.
4. Construct a theory of change for a proposed venture.
5. Assess founder–opportunity fit, including relevant knowledge, capabilities, networks, and commitment.
6. Formulate and test a clear venture thesis.
7. Identify ethical, regulatory, and evidential risks in opportunity development.

From Idea to Opportunity

An idea is a mental concept for a product, service, process, or business model. It may originate from personal experience, technological change, observation of inefficient practices, research, or social need. An idea is not automatically valuable. Its value depends on whether it solves a problem that matters to identifiable users and whether the venture can deliver the solution sustainably.

A problem is an undesirable condition, difficulty, risk, or unmet objective. A customer need is the underlying functional, emotional, social, or economic requirement associated with that problem. For example, “students need a mobile application” is a proposed solution, not a need. The underlying need might be easier access to affordable academic support, confidence in difficult subjects, or improved coordination with tutors.

An opportunity exists when several conditions align:

1. Desirability: customers or beneficiaries recognize sufficient value in the proposed change.
2. Feasibility: the solution can be produced and delivered using available or obtainable resources.
3. Viability: the venture can sustain itself financially or through an appropriate funding model.
4. Timeliness: market, technological, regulatory, or social conditions make action particularly relevant.
5. Appropriability: the venture can capture part of the value it creates through revenue, contracts, licensing, grants, partnerships, or another mechanism.

These conditions should not be treated as permanent properties. An opportunity is shaped by context and may change as technologies, regulations, competitors, customer behaviour, or resource constraints change.

Opportunity Recognition

Opportunity recognition refers to the process through which individuals notice, interpret, and develop possibilities for creating value. Entrepreneurs may recognize opportunities through:

• Prior knowledge: experience in an industry reveals inefficiencies or underserved segments.
• Entrepreneurial alertness: attention to changes that others overlook.
• Social networks: conversations with users, suppliers, professionals, and communities expose problems and resources.
• Problem pressure: personal frustration or repeated exposure to an unresolved difficulty.
• Technological change: new capabilities make previously impractical solutions possible.
• Institutional change: new laws, public programs, demographic patterns, or cultural expectations create demand.

Recognition is not the same as validation. An entrepreneur may be correct that a problem exists but incorrect about who experiences it, how frequently it occurs, what solution they prefer, or whether they will pay. Validation requires systematic evidence.

Opportunity Evaluation

A useful initial evaluation asks:

Evidence should be distinguished from assumptions. “Small businesses need faster bookkeeping” is an assumption until supported by conversations, observed behaviour, purchasing data, or other credible evidence. A strong business plan makes assumptions visible rather than disguising them as facts.

Causation and Effectuation

Entrepreneurship research commonly distinguishes between causation and effectuation. They are not mutually exclusive personality types or rigid stages. They are different logics for making decisions.

Causation Logic

Causation begins with a defined goal and asks what resources and actions are required to achieve it. The process typically involves market research, segmentation, forecasting, competitive analysis, planning, budgeting, and execution. It is especially useful when:

• the market is relatively understood;
• customer requirements are stable;
• outcomes can be predicted with reasonable confidence;
• resources can be acquired before major commitment; and
• the cost of deviation is high.

For example, a food-processing entrepreneur entering an established market may use demand estimates, capacity planning, supplier contracts, regulatory requirements, and financial projections to determine whether a plant should be built.

Causation encourages discipline. It helps entrepreneurs define milestones, allocate resources, compare alternatives, and communicate with investors or lenders. Its weakness is that early-stage ventures often operate where reliable forecasts do not exist. Excessive planning can create false precision and delay learning.

Effectuation Logic

Effectuation begins with available means rather than a fixed objective. The entrepreneur asks:

• Who am I, and what values or identity do I bring?
• What do I know?
• Whom do I know?
• What can I do with the resources currently available?

The entrepreneur then interacts with stakeholders to co-create possible goals and opportunities. Effectuation is particularly relevant when uncertainty is high and the future cannot be predicted reliably.

Five principles are commonly associated with effectuation:

1. Bird-in-hand: begin with existing means, including identity, knowledge, and networks.
2. Affordable loss: decide what can be risked rather than relying only on expected returns.
3. Crazy quilt: build partnerships with stakeholders who commit resources or knowledge.
4. Lemonade: leverage surprises rather than treating every deviation as failure.
5. Pilot-in-the-plane: focus on actions that shape the future instead of attempting to predict it completely.

Effectuation does not mean acting randomly or ignoring strategy. It means treating strategy as an evolving process of commitments, experiments, and negotiated possibilities. Its risks include persistence with an attractive but weak idea, underestimating opportunity cost, and accepting commitments that create ethical or operational constraints.

Combining the Two Logics

A capable entrepreneur moves between effectuation and causation. Effectuation may be appropriate when the customer, product, and business model are uncertain. As evidence accumulates, causation becomes more useful for scaling, capacity planning, hiring, pricing, and investment decisions.

For example, a founder may use existing contacts to conduct interviews and build a low-cost prototype. After identifying a repeatable customer segment and measurable demand, the founder may use causal planning to forecast production, establish quality systems, and negotiate financing. The transition should be evidence-based rather than automatic.

Design Thinking and Customer Need

Design thinking is a human-centred approach to innovation. It treats customer understanding as an investigative activity rather than an exercise in guessing. Although versions differ, the process commonly includes empathizing, defining, ideating, prototyping, and testing.

Empathize

The purpose of empathy work is to understand people in context. Useful methods include semi-structured interviews, observation, diary studies, journey mapping, and analysis of existing service interactions. Good inquiry explores what people do, not only what they say they would do.

An interview question such as “Would you buy this app?” often produces unreliable answers because respondents are being asked to predict hypothetical behaviour. Better questions include:

• “Tell me about the last time this problem occurred.”
• “What did you do first?”
• “What did it cost you in time, money, or stress?”
• “What alternatives have you tried?”
• “Who else was involved in the decision?”

Ethical research requires informed consent, respectful treatment, confidentiality where promised, and additional safeguards when participants are vulnerable.

Define

Definition converts observations into a focused problem statement. A useful structure is:

[Specific user] needs a better way to [job or desired outcome] because [evidence-based obstacle or consequence].

The statement should avoid embedding an untested solution. “Commuting students need a reliable way to find affordable meals near campus because existing options are expensive and difficult to compare” is more useful than “Commuting students need our meal-discovery application.”

A problem statement should identify the primary user, the context, the unmet need, and the consequence of inaction. It may also distinguish users, customers, beneficiaries, and decision-makers. In a public-health venture, for example, patients may be beneficiaries, clinics may be customers, and government agencies may be funding decision-makers.

Ideate, Prototype, and Test

Ideation generates alternatives before the team commits to one. Techniques include “how might we” questions, analogies, reframing, constraint-based design, and collaborative workshops. Quantity can be useful at this stage, but ideas must later be evaluated against evidence and constraints.

A prototype is a representation used to learn. It may be a sketch, clickable interface, role-play, landing page, service script, sample product, or manual version of a proposed system. A minimum viable product is not simply the smallest product that can be launched; it is the smallest credible experiment that tests an important value or feasibility assumption.

Testing should specify:

• the assumption being tested;
• the target participant or customer;
• the evidence that would support or weaken the assumption;
• the method and duration; and
• the decision that follows from each result.

This structure prevents “learning” from becoming an excuse for collecting unstructured opinions.

Theory of Change

A theory of change explains how a venture’s actions are expected to produce outputs, outcomes, and longer-term impact. It is valuable for commercial ventures, social enterprises, nonprofit ventures, and sustainability-oriented businesses.

The basic logic is:

Inputs → Activities → Outputs → Outcomes → Impact

• Inputs are resources such as staff, capital, technology, partnerships, and knowledge.
• Activities are actions performed by the venture.
• Outputs are immediate, countable products or services delivered.
• Outcomes are changes in customer behaviour, capability, condition, or performance.
• Impact is the broader and longer-term change to which the venture contributes.

A theory of change must include assumptions. For example, a venture may assume that customers have access to smartphones, that training changes behaviour, or that a partner will continue distributing the service. It should also identify external factors beyond the venture’s control.

A useful theory-of-change table is shown below:

The theory of change strengthens a business plan in three ways. First, it clarifies what value means for different stakeholders. Second, it identifies measurable indicators. Third, it exposes causal weaknesses. If activities produce outputs but no plausible mechanism connects outputs to outcomes, the venture’s impact claim is incomplete.

Indicators should be selected carefully. An output indicator might be “number of assessments completed,” whereas an outcome indicator might be “percentage of participating households reducing energy use after six months.” The first measures activity; the second is closer to value creation. Neither proves impact alone, and attribution may be difficult when many external influences are present.

Founder–Opportunity Fit

Founder–opportunity fit concerns the alignment between the venture’s requirements and the founding team’s capabilities, motivations, networks, legitimacy, and access to resources. It does not mean that founders must possess every skill. It means that critical gaps are recognized and addressed.

Important dimensions include:

• Domain knowledge: understanding of customer practices, industry processes, and regulations.
• Technical capability: ability to build, operate, or evaluate the solution.
• Commercial capability: selling, negotiating, pricing, marketing, and managing channels.
• Relational capital: access to customers, suppliers, partners, advisers, and investors.
• Credibility and legitimacy: reasons stakeholders should trust the team.
• Motivation and resilience: willingness to sustain effort through uncertainty.
• Ethical orientation: capacity to recognize harms, conflicts, and responsibilities.

Founder fit should not be used to claim that only insiders can innovate. Outsiders may identify overlooked possibilities. However, outsiders must compensate for missing knowledge through research, partnerships, hiring, or advisory support.

A practical fit assessment maps each critical venture requirement against current team strength and a gap-closing action.

Constructing the Venture Thesis

A venture thesis is a concise, evidence-based statement of the venture’s logic. It is not a slogan and not a complete business plan. It should be sufficiently specific to guide decisions and sufficiently testable to be challenged.

A useful structure is:

For [target customer or beneficiary] who experience [important problem], [venture] provides [distinctive solution or value proposition]. Unlike [relevant alternative], it achieves [important advantage] through [key capability or mechanism]. We believe this can become a viable venture because [evidence, business model, and founder–opportunity fit].

A stronger thesis also states its critical assumptions and near-term tests. For example:

For independent restaurants that lose sales because of unpredictable ingredient demand, HarvestLink provides a shared purchasing and forecasting service. Unlike general wholesale marketplaces, it combines local supplier coordination with restaurant-level demand data. We believe restaurants will pay a monthly fee plus a transaction charge because initial interviews and a paid pilot indicate measurable waste reduction. The next test is whether ten additional restaurants renew after a twelve-week pilot.

This thesis identifies a customer, problem, solution, alternative, mechanism, evidence, revenue logic, and test. It remains provisional: evidence may cause the team to revise the target segment, problem, solution, or business model.

The Assumption and Evidence Register

A disciplined team maintains a register of major assumptions.

Importance can be assessed qualitatively or through a scoring system. A simple risk-priority score may be calculated as:

where R is the risk-priority score, I is the consequence or importance of the assumption being false, and U is uncertainty about the assumption. The score is a prioritization aid, not a probability estimate. It is appropriate only when the team defines a consistent scale, such as 1 to 5 for each variable. A high-scoring assumption should generally be tested before lower-scoring assumptions.

Applied Case: RefillRoute

The following is an illustrative fictional case.

Background

Three university students observed that independent cafés near their campus used large quantities of single-use takeaway packaging. Café owners expressed concern about waste but were reluctant to adopt reusable containers because deposits, washing, tracking, and customer returns appeared complicated.

The founders initially proposed a mobile application that would allow students to locate cafés offering reusable containers. Their first idea focused on technology. During exploratory interviews, however, they discovered that café owners were more concerned with operational reliability than with customer discovery. They also learned that students were willing to return containers only when return points were convenient.

Problem Investigation

The founders conducted twenty-four interviews: fifteen with students, six with café operators, and three with campus facilities staff. They observed lunchtime transactions at four cafés and mapped the container journey from purchase to return and cleaning.

The evidence revealed three connected problems:

1. Cafés lacked a simple system for tracking containers and deposits.
2. Students encountered too few convenient return locations.
3. Facilities staff were concerned about hygiene standards and unclear responsibility.

The original problem statement—“students need an app for sustainable packaging”—was therefore reframed as follows:

Independent cafés near university campuses need a low-friction reusable-container service because they cannot manage tracking, returns, and cleaning economically on their own.

Students remained important beneficiaries and users, but cafés became the initial paying customer.

Analysis Through the Five Perspectives

Opportunity recognition: The opportunity arose from observing an operational gap rather than merely from environmental enthusiasm. Regulatory attention to single-use packaging and student sustainability preferences increased timeliness.

Effectuation: The founders began with their means: access to the campus, relationships with student societies, and one founder’s experience in logistics. A facilities manager agreed to advise them, and two cafés committed to a small pilot. These partnerships shaped the opportunity.

Causation: Once the pilot parameters were known, the team planned container quantities, collection schedules, cleaning responsibilities, and pricing. They also identified regulatory requirements for food-contact materials and sanitation.

Design thinking: Journey mapping showed that the greatest friction occurred after consumption, not at purchase. A prototype therefore tested return lockers and a simple deposit process rather than beginning with a complex application.

Theory of change: Inputs included containers, lockers, software, café staff, and campus partners. Activities included issuing containers, collecting and cleaning them, and returning them to cafés. Outputs included completed reusable transactions and sanitized containers. Outcomes included reduced single-use packaging and lower operational burden for cafés. The broader impact was reduced packaging waste, subject to assumptions about actual reuse rates and transportation emissions.

Solution and Venture Thesis

The pilot solution combined standardized containers, QR-based tracking, scheduled collection, and return lockers placed near residences and lecture buildings. Cafés paid a service fee per active location and a small charge per container cycle. Students paid a refundable deposit.

The revised venture thesis was:

For independent cafés near university campuses that want to reduce single-use packaging but lack the operational capacity to manage reuse, RefillRoute provides a managed container-return and cleaning service. Unlike a customer-only application, it integrates physical logistics, tracking, and sanitation. Early pilot commitments suggest customer interest, but renewal rates, container loss, cleaning cost, and actual reuse frequency remain critical assumptions.

Outcome and Learning

The first eight-week pilot demonstrated strong student participation but revealed that one return locker was poorly located. Two cafés reported lower packaging purchases, while the cleaning process cost more than expected. The team moved the locker, simplified the return interface, and renegotiated collection routes.

The principal learning was that environmental motivation created initial interest, but operational convenience determined continued use. The founders also learned that a credible impact claim required measuring container cycles, loss rates, transport emissions, and the packaging baseline—not merely counting registered users.

Challenges, Ethics, and Governance

Opportunity development contains ethical risks because founders influence how problems are represented and whose interests are prioritized.

Confirmation Bias

Founders may select only supportive evidence. To reduce this risk, teams should record disconfirming evidence, interview non-users, distinguish quotations from validated behaviour, and define decision rules before testing.

Vulnerable Participants

Research involving children, patients, low-income households, migrants, or other vulnerable groups requires heightened care. Participation must be voluntary, refusal must carry no penalty, and sensitive information must be protected. Incentives should not be so large that they undermine voluntary consent.

Privacy and Data Governance

Customer discovery and digital prototypes may collect personal data. Teams should collect only what is necessary, explain its use, limit access, retain it for a defined period, and comply with applicable data-protection law. Artificial intelligence tools can assist with synthesis or prototyping, but founders remain responsible for verifying outputs, protecting confidential data, and disclosing material limitations.

Inclusion and Accessibility

A solution designed around a “typical” customer may exclude people with disabilities, limited connectivity, language barriers, or different cultural practices. Inclusive design should be considered during discovery, not added after launch.

Responsible Claims

Environmental, health, social, and financial claims must be supported by appropriate evidence. A venture should not claim to “eliminate waste” when it has measured only product distribution. Theory-of-change assumptions and limitations should be communicated to investors, customers, and beneficiaries.

Regulation and Stakeholder Accountability

Regulatory requirements may concern product safety, licensing, employment, consumer protection, financial services, data, environmental standards, or professional practice. Compliance is not simply a later legal task. It can change the design of the opportunity, its cost structure, and its acceptable customer promise.

Technology and Contemporary Practice

Digital tools have reduced the cost of customer research, prototyping, analytics, and coordination. No-code platforms can test workflows; generative AI can help create interview guides, alternative concepts, and draft journey maps; analytics tools can reveal usage patterns. However, technology should serve a validated need rather than create artificial demand.

Contemporary ventures increasingly combine commercial and social objectives. Climate adaptation, health access, circular economy models, creator platforms, and responsible artificial intelligence create opportunities but also require careful attention to externalities and governance. A venture thesis should therefore explain not only the value delivered to the immediate customer but also material effects on workers, communities, suppliers, and the environment.

Best Practices for the Capstone Business Plan

A high-quality opportunity section should:

1. Describe a specific problem before presenting a solution.
2. Identify the user, customer, beneficiary, and decision-maker where they differ.
3. Support important claims with evidence and identify unresolved assumptions.
4. Combine effectual experimentation with causal planning as uncertainty declines.
5. Demonstrate how design research changed the initial idea.
6. Explain why the founding team is suited to pursue the opportunity.
7. Connect activities to outcomes through a theory of change.
8. Define a small number of measurable tests and decision rules.
9. Address ethical, legal, accessibility, privacy, and environmental issues.
10. State clearly why the opportunity matters now and why the venture can capture value.

Chapter Summary

An entrepreneurial opportunity is a context-dependent possibility for creating and capturing value; it is not equivalent to an idea. Opportunity recognition requires investigation of problem intensity, customer access, solution feasibility, economic viability, timing, competition, and founder fit.

Causation begins with goals and uses planning and prediction. Effectuation begins with available means and uses affordable loss, partnerships, experimentation, surprises, and control. Entrepreneurs should combine the two logics rather than treating either as universally superior.

Design thinking supports opportunity development through empathy, problem definition, ideation, prototyping, and testing. A customer need must be expressed without prematurely embedding a preferred solution. Theory of change connects inputs and activities to outputs, outcomes, and impact while making assumptions and external risks visible.

Founder–opportunity fit concerns the relationship between venture requirements and the team’s knowledge, capabilities, networks, legitimacy, motivation, and ethics. A venture thesis synthesizes the target customer, important problem, proposed solution, competitive distinction, value-capture logic, evidence, founder fit, and next tests. It is a testable argument that should evolve as evidence accumulates.

Key Terms

Opportunity: A context-dependent possibility to create and capture value.

Idea: A proposed concept for a product, service, process, or venture.

Customer need: A functional, emotional, social, or economic requirement experienced by a user or buyer.

Opportunity recognition: The process of noticing and developing possibilities for value creation.

Causation: A decision logic that begins with a defined goal and plans resources and actions to achieve it.

Effectuation: A decision logic that begins with available means and shapes possibilities through action and stakeholder commitments.

Affordable loss: The amount of resources an entrepreneur is willing to risk in an uncertain experiment.

Design thinking: A human-centred approach involving inquiry, definition, ideation, prototyping, and testing.

Problem statement: A focused description of a user, unmet need, context, and consequence.

Prototype: A representation used to learn about a solution or assumption.

Minimum viable product: The smallest credible offering or experiment capable of testing a significant assumption.

Theory of change: A causal explanation linking venture inputs and activities to outputs, outcomes, and impact.

Output: An immediate product or service delivered by a venture.

Outcome: A change in behaviour, condition, capability, or performance resulting from venture activity.

Impact: A broader, longer-term change to which a venture contributes.

Founder–opportunity fit: The alignment between venture requirements and the founding team’s capabilities and resources.

Value proposition: The specific benefit a venture promises to a defined customer or beneficiary.

Venture thesis: An evidence-based, testable argument explaining why a venture should exist and how it can create and capture value.

Assumption register: A structured record of important beliefs, evidence, uncertainty, and planned tests.

Confirmation bias: The tendency to seek or interpret information in ways that support existing beliefs.

Review Questions

Short Answer Questions

1. What distinguishes an entrepreneurial opportunity from an idea?
2. State the five principles commonly associated with effectuation.
3. Why should a problem statement avoid embedding an untested solution?
4. Distinguish an output from an outcome in a theory of change.
5. What dimensions should be considered when assessing founder–opportunity fit?

Long Answer Questions

1. Compare causation and effectuation, and explain when an entrepreneur might use each logic.
2. Explain how design thinking can reduce the risk of building a solution that customers do not value.
3. Describe how a theory of change strengthens a business plan.
4. Discuss the role of evidence and assumptions in constructing a venture thesis.
5. Explain the ethical responsibilities involved in customer discovery and opportunity validation.

Analytical / Application Questions

1. Select a problem affecting a defined customer group. Develop a problem statement, identify three critical assumptions, and propose a test for each.
2. Create a theory-of-change table for a venture of your choice, including inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, impact, assumptions, and external risks.
3. Write a venture thesis for a proposed business and critically assess its founder–opportunity fit, competitive distinction, value-capture logic, and most important next experiment.

Multiple Choice Questions with Answers

Question 1

Which condition most directly distinguishes an entrepreneurial opportunity from a simple idea?

A. The idea is technologically complex

B. The idea is supported by a feasible way to create and capture value

C. The founder feels personally enthusiastic about it

D. The idea has been discussed on social media

Correct Answer: B. The idea is supported by a feasible way to create and capture value

Question 2

Causation logic typically begins with:

A. Available means and unexpected surprises

B. A defined goal and a plan for obtaining resources

C. A partnership commitment from a stakeholder

D. A prototype that has already failed

Correct Answer: B. A defined goal and a plan for obtaining resources

Question 3

Which effectuation principle emphasizes beginning with identity, knowledge, and networks?

A. Affordable loss

B. Crazy quilt

C. Bird-in-hand

D. Lemonade

Correct Answer: C. Bird-in-hand

Question 4

Which interview question is most likely to produce evidence about actual customer behaviour?

A. Would you buy our proposed application?

B. Do you think this is a good idea?

C. Tell me about the last time this problem occurred.

D. Would you recommend this to your friends?

Correct Answer: C. Tell me about the last time this problem occurred.

Question 5

In a theory of change, the number of completed services delivered is usually an example of a(n):

A. Input

B. Output

C. Outcome

D. Impact

Correct Answer: B. Output

Question 6

What is the principal purpose of a prototype in design thinking?

A. To prove that the final business model is profitable

B. To create a polished product for investors

C. To learn about important solution and feasibility assumptions

D. To replace customer research

Correct Answer: C. To learn about important solution and feasibility assumptions

Question 7

Which statement best describes founder–opportunity fit?

A. The founder personally invented the technology

B. The founding team’s capabilities and resources align with venture requirements

C. The founder has no need for partners or advisers

D. The founder has prepared a detailed five-year forecast

Correct Answer: B. The founding team’s capabilities and resources align with venture requirements

Question 8

In the illustrative RefillRoute case, cafés became the initial paying customer because they:

A. Had the greatest interest in downloading an application

B. Controlled the operational problem and could pay for its resolution

C. Were the only stakeholders affected by packaging waste

D. Were legally required to purchase the service

Correct Answer: B. Controlled the operational problem and could pay for its resolution

Question 9

Using R = I × U, what is the risk-priority score when importance I = 4 and uncertainty U = 3?

A. 7

B. 12

C. 16

D. 43

Correct Answer: B. 12

Question 10

Which practice best reduces confirmation bias during opportunity validation?

A. Interviewing only enthusiastic potential customers

B. Ignoring evidence that contradicts the original idea

C. Recording disconfirming evidence and defining decision rules before testing

D. Using a larger advertising budget before conducting research

Correct Answer: C. Recording disconfirming evidence and defining decision rules before testing