OPPORTUNITIES AS EXISTING AND CREATED: A STUDY OF ENTREPRENEURS IN THE SWEDISH MOBILE INTERNET INDUSTRY (original) (raw)
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Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 2011
The notion of opportunity, as currently discussed in entrepreneurship research, is theoretically exciting but empirically elusive. This article seeks to stimulate a new conversation about entrepreneurial opportunities by distinguishing two conceptions of entrepreneurial behavior—formal and substantive—and situating the construct of opportunity within the latter. It discusses three substantive premises for studying opportunities empirically: (1) opportunity as happening; (2) opportunity as expressed in actions; and (3) opportunity as instituted in market structures. These premises stimulate research questions that can invigorate and expand the study of entrepreneurial opportunities. They invite a continuous dialogue between qualitative and quantitative methodologies in behalf of understanding how opportunities emerge and evolve at the level of individual entrepreneurs.
International Small Business Journal
This article has two objectives: to critique the dominant opportunity discovery and creation literatures and to propose a new, critical realist–inspired analytical framework to theorise the causes, processes and consequences of entrepreneurial action – one that needs no concept of opportunity. We offer three reasons to support our critique of opportunity studies. First, there are important absences, contradictions and inconsistencies in definitions of opportunity in theoretical and empirical work that mean the term cannot signal a clear direction for theorising or empirical research. Our central criticism is that the concept of opportunity cannot refer simultaneously, without contradiction, to a social context offering profit-making prospects, to particular practices and to agents’ subjective beliefs or imagined futures. Second, a new definition of opportunity would perpetuate the conceptual chaos. Third, useful concepts to capture important entrepreneurial processes are readily ava...
The Eureka Moment in Entrepreneurial Opportunity as an Imaginative Construct
Entrepreneurial opportunity stimulates action. Does it only stimulate entrepreneurs to action? Or to non-entrepreneurs as well? What it is, and what it is not? Who is an entrepreneur? The concept of opportunity has been a bedrock in entrepreneurship research since Shane and Venkataraman’s seminal work in 2000. Researchers have explored the emergence, the role and the purpose of opportunity since then. Despite more than two decades of scholarship on the construct that has moved us well beyond what Shane and Venkataraman originally defined and with seminal papers that have moved us toward a better and more sophisticated understanding of the opportunity, we are still asking who an entrepreneur is? Ramoglou, Gartner and Tsang argue that this is the wrong question. The definitional varieties and fragments move Davidsson to suggest dismantling the construct and re-contextualising it with a more suitable and coherent framework. Foss and Klein suggest doing away with the opportunity concept...
A CONSTRUCTIVIST FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING ENTREPRENEURIAL OPPORTUNITIES (SUMMARY
2006
Research on entrepreneurship has multiplied in recent years, according an increasingly important role to the concept of market opportunities. However, this term is still often defined in an implicit manner, which often hides the wealth and complexity of the object of this study. This article aims to show that epistemological clarification allows for both: -avoidance of economists' bias, which has irrigated most literature on opportunity, -identification of the main dimensions of this phenomenon, dimensions which, until now, have been mainly ignored or underestimated.
A Narrative Perspective on Entrepreneurial Opportunities
Academy of Management Review, 2012
In press. Forming and exploiting opportunities: The implications of discovery and creation processes for entrepreneurial and organizational research. Organization Science. Barney, J. B. (Ed.). 2003. Resources, capabilities, core competencies, invisible assets, and knowledge assets: Label proliferation and theory development in the field of strategic management. Oxford: Blackwell.
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The nature and source of entrepreneurial opportunity are important issues for understanding how markets function and come into being. In addition to describing the forum held on the topic and summarizing the contributions of the articles that appear in the special issue, this article shares a number of lessons learned during the workshop and the editorial process. We explore three of the most important reasons for confusion about the opportunity construct: (1) the ''objectivity'' of opportunity, (2) the perceived importance of one particular individual in determining the direction of the social world and (3) what distinguishes the sub-class of ''entrepreneurial'' opportunity from the broader category of opportunity in general. Finally, we offer some directions for future research by illuminating important issues that emerged from the workshop but that remain largely unanswered by the papers of this special issue.
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Small Business Economics, 2014
The notion that opportunities exist objectively ''out there'' has been repeatedly assaulted by scholars who counter that opportunities are subjectively constructed or created. This paper intends to restore the balance by bringing the critical strands of inquiry themselves under critical scrutiny. Beyond the formulation of some original lines of critique and the drawing of attention to some foundational yet insufficiently studied issues, this article further contributes the following: (1) it juxtaposes a taxonomical ordering of constructivist approaches; (2) it identifies angles of complementarity and contradiction with the objectivist perspective; and (3) it brings subtle conceptual distinctions into prominence. Keywords Entrepreneurial opportunities Á Austrian economics Á Philosophy of the social sciences Á Constructivist ontology Á Conceptual analysis JEL Classifications B52 Á B25 Á L26 Á B53