Abstract Entrepreneurs often face the daunting task of predicting consumer demand before it exists—what consumers will want if and when the entrepreneur might make it available to them. Such alertness and judgment require an entrepreneur's vicarious imagination—the supposition of what a value experience would be like for another—such as empathy. Prevailing theories of empathy, however, are ill-suited for entrepreneurship theory as they are defined as and focused on an emotion-matching process. We propose that empathy be understood instead as a vicarious mental simulation of another's experience that, when accurate, produces similar emotions but also similar experiential knowledge. According to our ‘simulated empathy theory,’ empathy is a rational imagination process, intentional and knowledge-based. We connect this empathy process to contemporary entrepreneurship theory, namely opportunity recognition and evaluation processes. We also revise the concept of empathic accuracy accordingly, and derive therefrom some practical implications regarding how entrepreneurs can increase their empathic accuracy and, thereby, their chances of success.

中文翻译：

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我们彼此了解吗？面向创业的模拟移情理论

摘要 企业家通常面临着在消费者需求存在之前预测消费者需求的艰巨任务——如果企业家可以以及何时为他们提供消费者会想要什么。这种警觉性和判断力需要企业家的替代想象力——对另一种价值体验的假设——例如同理心。然而，流行的同理心理论不适合创业理论，因为它们被定义为并专注于情感匹配过程。我们建议将同理心理解为对他人经历的替代性心理模拟，如果准确，会产生相似的情绪，但也会产生相似的经验知识。根据我们的“模拟移情理论”，移情是一种理性的想象过程，是有意识的、基于知识的。我们将这种移情过程与当代创业理论联系起来，即机会识别和评估过程。我们还相应地修改了移情准确度的概念，并从中得出了一些关于企业家如何提高移情准确度以及成功机会的实际意义。