Opportunities and Entrepreneurship
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What is This?
Scott A. Shane
Van Munching Hall, Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland,
College Park, MD 20742, USA
This article extends and elaborates the perspective on entrepreneurship articulated by Shane
and Venkataraman (2000) and Venkataraman (1997) by explaining in more detail the role of
opportunities in the entrepreneurial process. In particular, the article explains the importance
of examining entrepreneurship through a disequilibrium framework that focuses on the char-
acteristics and existence of entrepreneurial opportunities. In addition, the article describes
several typologies of opportunities and their implications for understanding entrepreneurship.
© 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.
In their efforts to define a distinctive domain for the field of entrepreneurship, researchers
have recently shifted attention away from approaches that focus on identifying those people
in society who prefer to become entrepreneurs towards understanding the nexus of enter-
prising individuals and valuable opportunities (Venkataraman, 1997). This new focus has
required scholars to explain the role of opportunities in the entrepreneurial process.
Several articles (e.g., Shane & Venkataraman, 2000; Venkataraman, 1997) have pre-
viously sought to outline this theoretical perspective. Unfortunately, these articles have
generated confusion among scholars about entrepreneurial opportunities and their role
in the entrepreneurial process (see, for example, Erikson, 2001; Shane & Venkataraman,
2001; Singh, 2001; Zahra & Dess, 2001). This article provides a deeper discussion of the
role of opportunities than that provided in the previous papers. We hope that this effort will
clarify the central role that opportunities play in a framework for entrepreneurship.
To accomplish this goal, our paper first discusses the equilibrium orientation that underlies
much of the theory and empirical testing in entrepreneurship research today. This is an
important issue as several approaches explicitly or implicitly assume equilibrium conditions.
0149-2063/02/$ – see front matter © 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.
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334 J.T. Eckhardt, S.A. Shane / Journal of Management 2003 29(3) 333–349
For example, in the section entitled “Existing Theories of Entrepreneurship,” we point out
that a large body of entrepreneurship research either implicitly or explicitly assumes that
entrepreneurship is a function of differences across people in stable attributes and therefore
can be examined empirically through cross-sectional tests that compare different types of
people. In response to this orientation, we provide four arguments for why equilibrium
assumptions are problematic in the context of entrepreneurship. The second section of our
paper, entitled “Moving Away From Existing Theories of Entrepreneurship” explains why
entrepreneurship requires theories based on the existence of opportunities and the actions
of agents, and not simply based on the characteristics of agents. We continue by explaining
what those opportunities are and why prices do not reflect their existence. In this section,
we also discuss how opportunities are discovered and how they are exhausted. The third
section of our paper, entitled “Types of Opportunities” looks at three important dimensions
of opportunities: the locus of changes that lead to the existence of opportunities, the sources
of opportunity, and the initiator of the change that led to the opportunity. The fourth section
of our paper, entitled “Implications for Theory Development and Theory Testing” discusses
the ramifications of our approach for developing theory about entrepreneurship and for data
gathering and empirical analysis. A final section offers conclusions.
For the past 30 years, the dominant theories in entrepreneurship have sought to explain
entrepreneurship as a function of the types of people engaged in entrepreneurial activity and,
as a result, have largely overlooked the role of opportunities. First, researchers have tended
to take a person-centric perspective, in which entrepreneurship depends on stable, enduring
differences among people rather than differences in the information they possess about the
presence of opportunities. For example, Khilstrom and Laffont (1979) argue that people
with a greater preference for uncertainty prefer to be entrepreneurs while those with a lesser
preference for uncertainty prefer to be wage employees. Unfortunately, the person-centric
approach has been largely unsuccessful in explaining entrepreneurship (Gartner, 1990),
in part because entrepreneurial activity is episodic, making it unlikely to be explained by
factors that influence human action in the same way all of the time (Carroll & Mosakowski,
1987). Our central point is that the episodic information that people have gathered about
particular opportunities also matters to entrepreneurship and is under-investigated.
Second, many researchers have assumed that entrepreneurship is an equilibrium phe-
nomenon, either explicitly, as is the case in economics research on the topic, or implicitly
in the management and organizations literature, where scholars use static cross-sectional
tests that can only be valid if the phenomenon under investigation is time invariant.
We argue that to successfully explain entrepreneurship requires researchers to assume or
allow disequilibrium. To show why disequilibrium is necessary for entrepreneurship, below
we summarize the basic assumptions of equilibrium theories and explain why these theories
fail to capture entrepreneurship adequately.
Equilibrium theories model market economies in a state in which participants have no
incentive to change their present actions, as they are satisfied with the current combination
of prices and quantities that are bought or sold (Pearce, 1992). In the parlance of economics,
Following Casson (1982) and Shane and Venkataraman (2000), we define entrepreneurial
opportunities as situations in which new goods, services, raw materials, markets and orga-
nizing methods can be introduced through the formation of new means, ends, or means-ends
relationships. These situations do not need to change the terms of economic exchange to
be entrepreneurial opportunities, but only need to have the potential to alter the terms of
economic exchange. In addition, unlike optimizing or satisficing decisions, in which the
ends that the decision maker is trying to achieve and the means that the decision maker will
employ are given, entrepreneurial decisions are creative decisions. That is, the entrepreneur
constructs the means, the ends, or both.
The creation of new means-ends frameworks in entrepreneurial decision making is a
crucial part of the difference between entrepreneurial opportunities and situations in which
profit can be generated by optimizing within previously established means-ends frameworks
(Kirzner, 1997). Entrepreneurial opportunities cannot be exploited by optimizing because
the set of alternatives in introducing new things is unknown, precluding mechanical cal-
culations between all possible alternatives (Baumol, 1993). Thus, while non-entrepreneurial
decisions maximize scarce resources across previously developed means and ends,
entrepreneurial decisions involve the creation or identification of new ends and means
(Gaglio & Katz, 2001) previously undetected or unutilized by market participants.
The market system is a powerful means of coordinating economic activity because prices
simultaneously coordinate the production plans, resource availability, and resource require-
ments of market participants in a way that limits the cognitive demands on any one indi-
vidual. By efficiently transmitting information, the invisible hand of the market coordinates
the actions of millions of people who never have to interact directly with one another, or
even know why or how others produce goods and services (Barney, 1991; Smith, 1776).
As valuable as the price system is to the coordination of economic activity, it has one
major weakness: prices do not accurately convey all information necessary to coordinate
economic decisions. As a result, prices do not accurately guide the discovery and exploitation
of entrepreneurial opportunities.
For entrepreneurial opportunities to exist, people must not agree on the value of resources
at a given point in time. For an entrepreneur to exploit an opportunity, he or she must
believe that the value of resources, used according to a particular means-ends framework,
would be higher than if exploited in their current form. In addition, profits are limited
if the belief is universally shared (Casson, 1982). If all of the current resource owners
and other potential entrepreneurs shared the entrepreneur’s belief in the correctness of the
proposed new means-ends framework, then they would hold the same beliefs about the
value of resources as the focal entrepreneur. If they based their decisions on these beliefs,
this situation would limit the ability for the focal entrepreneur to obtain the resources at a
price that would allow profitable use (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000).
But why, in a market economy, should people hold different beliefs regarding the value
of resources if the price system provides an efficient means of transmitting information
about changes in beliefs between disconnected individuals? The answer is that prices fail
to provide all of the necessary information to make all decisions about resources.
First, prices convey only part of the information necessary to direct opportunities to
serve existing markets. Producers are unable to make production decisions and allocate
resources simply by producing quantities that set prices to marginal cost, as costs are
unknowable before goods and services are created. Prices also fail to provide informa-
tion on how new markets could be served, how a new technology could be used to
improve a production process, or how a new way of organizing will generate value. In
addition, prices do not contain information about prior failures at that effort, or articulate
how one’s approach to using resources would stand vis-à-vis the approaches of potential
competitors.
Second, prices convey even less information to direct opportunities to serve markets that
do not yet exist. While market participants might be satisfied today, a future condition might
emerge that would lead them to desire a new good or service. However, as Arrow (1974)
explained, there are no contingent prices for future goods and services. In the absence of
futures markets for goods and services, there is no way to use current prices to determine
if there would be an opportunity to serve a market that is not yet in existence. Similarly,
there is no way for current prices to guide the allocation of resources in the current period
in anticipation of resource needs of markets that will exist in the future, but that do not
currently exist.
Evidence of the latter problem is most prevalent during periods of technological change,
which do not appear to be anticipated by markets. For example, in the 19th century, just
prior to the invention of steam ships, prices sent incorrect signals to sailboat producers and
customers about the production of sail-powered cargo vessels designed to last for several
decades (Slaven, 1993).
Given that prices cannot tell people what future demand will be, they provide limited
information about forward marginal costs or revenues. Similarly, because markets set prices
on known technology, not new methods that may be discovered in the future, prices do not
reflect the relative benefits of different innovations if they would be introduced in the future.
However, the appropriateness of resource allocation decisions in the current period, such as
investments in durable plant and equipment, are contingent on the characteristics of future
markets for goods and services.
Thus, even Hayek’s (1945: 526) example of the value of the price system in the tin
market shows the limitations of the price system for allocating resources for entrepreneurial
opportunities. He wrote, “assume that somewhere in the world a new opportunity for the
use of some raw materials, say tin, has arisen, or that one of the sources of supply of tin has
been eliminated. It does not matter . . . which of these two causes has made tin more scarce.
All that the users of tin need to know is that some of the tin they used to consume is now
more profitably employed elsewhere, and that in consequence they must economize tin.” To
Hayek, producers need only to look at the prevailing price of tin when making production
decisions.
However, Hayek’s account only describes how prices guide the decision process of tin
producers who are selecting what quantity of a standardized good currently under production
to produce. Prices provide little information to guide producers who have developed a novel
use for tin or even if they should invest resources in developing such novel uses.
To the entrepreneur seeking to profit from this change, which of the two causes of tin
scarcity is of fundamental importance. If an entrepreneur believes that the shortage of tin
has resulted from the new use of tin, she may conjecture that using tin in the new way would
be profitable if she is able to copy this new use of tin. Therefore, purchasing the tin, creating
a new product, and then selling it would result in a profit. On the other hand, if the true
cause of the tin shortage were an elimination of a source of supply, then she will be unable
to profit from the change unless she has access to supplies of tin. The difference between
entrepreneurial profit and loss in this case lies not in the information about the shortage of
tin indicated by the price change, but in the entrepreneurial conjecture as to the cause of
that shortage.
Discovery Defined
Given the limits to the price system described above, situations arise in which prices pro-
vide insufficient information to allocate resources. In these situations, individuals must make
decisions based on information not incorporated in prices, and do so through mechanisms
other than optimization. Entrepreneurial discovery is the perception of a new means-ends
framework to incorporate information, incompletely or partially neglected by prices, that
has the potential to be incorporated in prices and thereby efficiently guide the resource
allocation decisions of others.
Entrepreneurs bring new means-ends decision making frameworks into the price system
by forming perceptions and beliefs about how to allocate resources better than they are
currently allocated or would be allocated in the future on the basis of information not
incorporated in prices. By leading entrepreneurs to buy resources, use them for different
purposes, and sell the outputs, these perceptions create new markets or update old ones. The
prices that are updated or created through this process increase the accuracy of decisions
of others who coordinate resources by optimizing within the price-based market system. In
Hayek’s example, the production plans and use of tin of other producers was updated by
the novel use of tin by one individual.
Formulating a profitable conjecture about an opportunity is far from the trivial exercise
of optimizing within existing means-ends frameworks because it requires forming expec-
tations about the prices at which goods and services that do not yet exist will sell (Arrow,
1974; Venkataraman, 1997). When these conjectures prove correct, entrepreneurs earn en-
trepreneurial profit, but when they prove incorrect, entrepreneurs incur entrepreneurial loss
(Casson, 1982; Shane & Venkataraman, 2000).
The process of discovery describes how individuals2 acting alone, or within firms, per-
ceive of a previously unseen or unknown way to create a new means-ends framework.3
For example, suppose an individual has perceived that she can produce a new item by a
previously unknown means. To establish if the opportunity has value in the first case, the
individual must conjecture that a positive probability exists that the future price of the item
will exceed its costs and that future demand will exist. In the latter case, the individual will
need to conjecture that once others are presented with the actual product, they will respond
positively to it. In both cases, the individual must attempt to foresee the characteristics of
future markets to determine ex ante if the opportunity has potential value.
Predicting such things with certainty is not possible, as it requires individuals to possess
information that does not yet exist at the time of individual discovery. For example, current
customers are unlikely to provide accurate forecasts of their own future demand for new
products even when working prototypes exist (Christensen & Bower, 1996). In addition,
individuals may be mistaken in their analysis of the characteristics of the usefulness of new
items. Therefore, individuals, operating alone or within firms, lack sufficient information
to establish if a discovery has been made, when discovery is defined as the recognition of
information that can update prices.
In the process of the exploitation of opportunities, individuals acquire resources and
engage in activities that change prices and provide information to others. The process of
exchange and interaction provides information that increases the mutual awareness among
market participants about the characteristics of the opportunity (Arrow, 1974; Jovanovic,
1982; Venkataraman, 1997). This information may either encourage or discourage the in-
dividual pursuing the opportunity from continuing.
The only reliable confirmation that a previously unseen or unknown valuable opportunity
does in fact exist occurs when a market has been created for the new item. In the absence of
market confirmation, the validity of the entrepreneur’s perception is unknown; no knowledge
is recorded in prices, and therefore the production plans and preferences of individuals are
not updated.
the opportunity is and how to pursue it. Although this imitation might initially legitimate
an opportunity, it also generates competition that exhausts the discrepancy to the point
where the incentive to act no longer exists (Schumpteter, 1934; Shane & Venkataraman,
2000). Third, information about the opportunity diffuses to resource owners, who may seek
to capture profits by raising the price of their resources in response to information gener-
ated by the actions of the entrepreneurs about the new value of their resources (Kirzner,
1997).
However, the opportunity half-life can last longer or shorter depending on a variety of
factors. First, mechanisms that limit imitation by other entrepreneurs, such as trade se-
crecy, patent protection, or monopoly contracts prolong the life of the opportunity (Shane
& Venkataraman, 2000). Second, mechanisms that slow the transmission or recognition
of information about the opportunity hinder imitation, thereby extending the life of the
opportunity. They also include situations in which few parties have the requisite knowl-
edge to copy a way of exploiting an opportunity despite its demonstration (Zucker et al.,
1998).
Types of Opportunities
Locus of Changes
Sources of Opportunities
Opportunities also vary as to their source. We believe that prior research suggests four
important ways of categorizing opportunities by sources. The first involves considering
differences between opportunities that result from asymmetries in existing information
between market participants and opportunities that result from exogenous shocks of new
information. The second comparison lies between supply and demand side opportunities.
The third differentiates between productivity-enhancing and rent-seeking opportunities.
The fourth lies in identifying the catalysts of change that generate the opportunities.
Information asymmetry vs. exogenous shocks. Kirzner (1973) and Schumpteter (1934)
disagreed over whether exogenous shocks of information are the primary catalyst of en-
trepreneurship. In what Venkataraman (1997) termed the strong form of entrepreneurship,
Schumpteter (1934) held that periods of market efficiency are punctuated by periods of
upheaval. Changes in technology, regulation, and other factors generate new information
about how resources might be used differently. This information changes the price for
resources, thereby allowing economic actors who have early access to the new informa-
tion to purchase resources at low prices, use the information to create products or services
and sell them at an entrepreneurial profit (Schumpteter, 1934; Shane & Venkataraman,
2000).
In contrast, Kirzner (1973, 1985, 1997) holds that opportunities exist even in the absence
of this new information. In the absence of prices, he argues, people form beliefs in response
to information they possess. Because those beliefs are influenced by a wide variety of
ceaselessly changing factors, they are never 100% accurate. As a result, market actors make
mistakes in their decisions, creating shortages and surpluses of resources (Gaglio & Katz,
2001). People alert to these mistakes can obtain resources and use them to create a profitable
new product or service (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000).
Shifts in societal demographics also generate and close off opportunities (Drucker, 1985).
For example, the aging of the baby boomers generates opportunities for reallocation of
resources from products and services to children to products and services for the elderly
and the growth of the Hispanic population in some areas of the United States has produced
opportunities to start Spanish radio stations.
However, the most researched exogenous shift is that catalyzed by the creation of new
knowledge. New knowledge creates the opportunity for entrepreneurs to create new goods,
to introduce new methods of production, to utilize new sources of supply, to restructure
industries, and to create new markets in new regions (Schumpteter, 1934) by replenishing
the pool of opportunities that is drawn upon by entrepreneurs in their pursuit of profit
(Klevorick, Levin, Nelson & Winter, 1995).
Malerba and Orsenigo (1997) classify the properties of technology regimes that influence
the existence and characteristics of knowledge based opportunities on four dimensions.
First, opportunity conditions are the factors that influence the ability to innovate for a
given investment in search for opportunities. Second, appropriability conditions describe
the ability and methods to prevent the mechanisms of opportunity exploitation from being
imitated by others. Third, cumulativeness conditions tie past search activities to future
possibilities. Fourth, the nature of the knowledge itself influences the type and volume of
opportunities.
Opportunity conditions are defined by the amount, variety, and source of feasible so-
lutions. For example, some industries may benefit from advances in basic scientific un-
derstanding, such as biotechnology or semiconductors, while others may not (Klevorick
et al., 1995). Opportunity conditions are most favorable when for a given investment the
likelihood of achieving innovation is high and when it is possible to use a single development
for multiple solutions.
Appropriability conditions consider the effectiveness of efforts to imitate a mechanism to
exploit an opportunity. In industries where appropriability conditions are strong, effective
methods exist that prevent others from imitating investments in innovation. For example,
investments in new drugs in the pharmaceutical industry are protected from imitation by
effective patents for an extended period. Research indicates that methods of protection vary
widely by opportunities. For example, patent effectiveness has been found to be more effec-
tive in preventing imitation of product innovations while secrecy appears to be a superior
method to protect process innovations (Levin, Klevorick, Nelson & Winter, 1987).
Appropriability conditions may alter the type of opportunities available in an industry,
but no clear relationship has been established between the strength of methods to protect
innovation and the aggregate level of opportunities. For example, technological regimes
under which appropriability mechanisms are weak limit the returns directly earned by inno-
vators. However, in such regimes profitable opportunities may exist to duplicate innovative
efforts by others.
Cumulative conditions describe the relationship, if any, between historical and future
exploitation of opportunities. Industries with strong cumulative conditions are those where
current developments build on prior developments. This is likely to occur when prior knowl-
edge investments constrain future exploitation, when technological and organization capa-
bilities enhance the search for new knowledge, or when feedbacks exist between earlier
innovation and the ability to continue to innovate (Malerba & Orsenigo, 1997).
Lastly, the nature of the knowledge itself is likely to influence the volume and type
of entrepreneurial opportunities. Knowledge may be either generic or specific to a single
application. Moreover, it may be tacit or codifiable, and it may draw on the integration
of multiple technological fields and disciplines. Knowledge may also be easily isolated or
it may be imbedded in a complex system and therefore not well understood (Malerba &
Orsenigo, 1997). In all cases, the knowledge characteristics of industry may help determine
the types and volume of opportunities available for discovery and exploitation.
Supply vs. demand side changes. Opportunities can also be classified on whether the
changes that generate them exist on the demand or the supply side. In general, the en-
trepreneurship literature implicitly focuses on supply side changes. For example, most
discussions of opportunity concern changes in inputs, ways of organizing, production
processes, or products (Schumpteter, 1934). But changes in demand alone can generate
opportunities. Customer preferences influence the allocation of resources because produc-
ers need to respond to the preferences and purchasing habits of consumers. Thus, demand
changes from exogenous shifts in culture, perception, tastes, or mood can open up oppor-
tunities (Kirzner, 1997; Schumpteter, 1934), as in the case of demand for American flags in
response to a terrorist attack. The opportunity is created if the increase in demand outpaces
investments in production capacity, generating opportunities to add more capacity, perhaps
on more economic terms (Drucker, 1985). In addition, growing markets might create new
niches (Christensen & Bower, 1996) as well as the opportunity to specialize (Geroski,
2001).
To the extent that observed entry corresponds with the existence of opportunities, some
empirical support exists for the existence of opportunities in growing markets. For example,
Acs and Audretsch (1989), Highfield and Smiley (1987), Romanelli (1989), and Shankar,
Carpenter and Krishnamurthi (1999), all find a positive correlation between market growth
and firm entry. However, the research to date addresses this topic only indirectly, and more
studies should explore demand-driven entrepreneurial opportunities.
Initiator of the change. A final dimension on which opportunities have been classified is
by the actor that initiates the change. Different types of entities initiate the changes that result
in entrepreneurial opportunities, and the type of initiator is likely to influence the process of
discovery as well as the value and duration of the opportunities. Among the different types
of actors that researchers have identified are non-commercial entities, such as governments
or universities; existing commercial entities in an industry, such as incumbents and their
suppliers and customers; and new commercial entities in an industry such as independent
entrepreneurs and diversifying entrants (Klevorick et al., 1995).
Although researchers have not often examined the actors that generate opportunities much
outside the area of technological opportunities, work in that area is instructive. Researchers
have shown that two sets of actors are very important to the creation of technological
The arguments that we presented above have several implications for theory building and
theory testing in entrepreneurship. First, our arguments suggest that significant progress in
theory building may be achieved by a shift away from the “entrepreneurial type” paradigm
that is rooted in implicit assumptions about equilibrium differences between entrepreneurs
and other types of people to a paradigm of entrepreneurship that is embedded in the concept
of disequilibrium and incomplete information about opportunities. As we described earlier,
the basic rudiments of this framework hold that the basis for entrepreneurial activity is
rooted in an economic system in which information is unevenly distributed across people. It
is the possession of idiosyncratic information that leads to the existence and identification
of entrepreneurial opportunities—opportunities to obtain and use resources in the search
for profit.
Second, an opportunity-based perspective on entrepreneurship provides researchers with
the same general framework to explain many parts of the entrepreneurial process. As a
result, the framework can be utilized by scholars to move beyond studies that test theories
from other fields in “entrepreneurial settings” to studies that test central questions about the
discovery, evaluation, and exploitation of opportunities.
For example, research on entrepreneurial finance can be linked to research on opportunity
discovery and evaluation in an opportunity-based framework. Efforts to exploit one’s infor-
mation through the entrepreneurial process leads to important structural characteristics in
the search for resources and the organization of opportunity exploitation. Consequently, the
link between explanations for how people discover opportunities and how they use social
capital and contracting mechanisms to overcome problems of information asymmetry and
uncertainty in resource acquisition is much easier to accomplish in an opportunity-based
explanation for entrepreneurship than in a human-type explanation for entrepreneurship.
A third implication of the argument presented above is that the field is better served by
studies of the entrepreneurial process itself than studies which focus on normative arguments
for the performance of individual entrepreneurs. The opportunity-based perspective indi-
cates that much of the entrepreneurial process depends heavily on factors beyond the control
of individual entrepreneurs. In particular, the variance in opportunities that entrepreneurs
discover seems to be crucial to the process. Rather than explaining, for example, why one
new Internet company succeeds and another fails, the opportunity-based perspective sug-
gests significant advances will result from studies that focus on explaining such questions
as why Internet business models might be more valuable in a given industry than “bricks
and mortar” businesses.
Moreover, a focus on entrepreneurial opportunities leads researchers to move away from
the assumption that the process is done correctly by the majority of entrepreneurs. For
example, researchers may predict the factors that lead entrepreneurs to write business plans,
raise money, hire people, etc. . . . without the assumption that these activities have any effect
whatsoever on the overall performance of the new venture that is undertaken.
A fourth implication of the opportunity-based approach to entrepreneurship is that ex-
plaining the emergence and existence of entrepreneurial opportunities is a question of fun-
damental importance. One topic that warrants further investigation involves explaining
how social, political, regulatory, legal, and technological change create and eliminate en-
trepreneurial opportunities. In addition, advancing our understanding of the potential of
particular opportunities, such as the creation of the Internet, the shift of women into the
work force, and changes in regulation in post-communist societies (rather than just the
potential of individual entrepreneurs pursuing those opportunities), would be of significant
value. As a result, the environmental and structural approaches to entrepreneurship that
these arguments entail may become a much larger part of the field than is currently the case.
A final implication of an opportunity-based perspective on entrepreneurship is that the
methodologies that researchers use to test theories about entrepreneurship will have to
change. Because the opportunity-based perspective eschews equilibrium reasoning, it im-
plies that researchers cannot conduct static cross-sectional tests to explain the phenomenon.
Rather, researchers will need to use tools that are better suited to examining dynamic
processes that occur over time. From a non-statistical perspective, this means that lon-
gitudinal process studies, experiments, simulation models, and historical studies will be
necessary to properly examine entrepreneurship questions. From a statistical point of view,
the opportunity-based view of entrepreneurship suggests that researchers will not simply
analyze questions through the use of ordinary least squares regression techniques that as-
sume normal distributions of static data. Rather researchers will likely use event history
models, sequence analysis, and panel data sets with random and fixed effects models to
partial out unobserved heterogeneity in opportunities and individuals. This latter tech-
nique will be driven by the absolute necessity that opportunities be captured in our re-
search, despite the difficulty in measuring them. Heckman selection correction will most
certainly be adopted as a standard operating procedure in our statistical analysis, as selec-
tion is a major problem in entrepreneurship. Analysis using poisson and negative binomial
models will become more common as researchers recognize the nature of the distribution
of entrepreneurship data sets.
Conclusion
The purpose of this article was to clarify the role of opportunities in the entrepreneurial
process. We explained the weaknesses of the dominant equilibrium approaches to en-
trepreneurship and demonstrated why entrepreneurship needs to be examined through a
disequilibrium framework. We discussed the existence of entrepreneurial opportunities,
particularly as they relate to the limits of the price system. The article also reviewed several
typologies of opportunities. For all of these topics, we presented the logical arguments for
our approach to entrepreneurship. We also suggested how the perspective on entrepreneur-
ship that we outlined might influence the development of the field. We hope that this article
stimulates other scholars to join the effort to refine this framework and gather robust em-
pirical evidence to examine its validity.
Notes
1. Our perspective does not require features common to other theories of entrepreneur-
ship. First, we do not view the creation of new organizations as a defining characteristic
of entrepreneurial activity. Second, our perspective does not assume that the same per-
son or firm engages in all parts of the entrepreneurial process. Finally, our perspective
does not assume that any consistent relationship exists between the effort of skill at
discovery or exploitation, and entrepreneurial profits earned.
2. Because the discovery of an opportunity is a cognitive act, it is also an individual act.
3. Whether in fact this perception is correct is unknowable at the time of initial perception,
as it involves the ability to predict factors such as the characteristics of future market
demand, or the extent to which individuals can be convinced to commit resources
sufficient to sustain the effort to pursue the opportunity.
Acknowledgments
We thank two anonymous reviewers for providing suggestions that improved the
manuscript.
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