Cognitive Expansion and Business Model Innovation in Generative AI-based Solopreneurship: An Integrative Research Framework and Empirical Design

Abstract

The contemporary business ecosystem is at a profound strategic inflection point. Departing from the industrial-age paradigm where growth was proportional to labor and capital inputs, the current era is defined by "Solopreneurship," where individual creativity intersects with technological leverage to generate explosive value. At the core of this phenomenon lies the rapid advancement of cloud computing, no-code tools, and, most pivotally, Generative AI. Within the framework of the traditional Resource-Based View (RBV), small-scale enterprises have long been characterized by the "Liability of Smallness." Constraints in human and intellectual capital have historically hindered the sophistication of business models by compromising decision-making quality and operational velocity. However, Generative AI is fundamentally reconfiguring this equation of resource constraints. By intervening across the entire value chain— from market research and product development to marketing and data analytics—AI agents provide solopreneurs with capabilities equivalent to large-scale organizational structures. This transcends simple cost reduction; it functions as a mechanism that expands the entrepreneur’s cognitive bandwidth and accelerates business model innovation. The objective of this study is to elucidate the "Cognitive Pathway" through which the utilization of Generative AI by solopreneurs translates into business performance. Specifically, this research proposes and empirically validates a model in which the utilization of Generative AI serves as the independent variable and business model development satisfaction as the dependent variable, with the extensibility of thought, creative thinking, and executional thinking acting as multiple mediators. For solopreneurs, Generative AI is not merely a productivity tool but an instrument of cognitive revolution that enables profound business insight (extensibility), the discovery of novel opportunities (creativity), and decisive action (execution). By demonstrating that these cognitive shifts ultimately drive business model innovation, this study seeks to define a new form of entrepreneurship in the AI era and provide a theoretical foundation for the emergence of "Solo-Unicorns."