• What is [the] your

entrepreneurial
opportunity?

• Professor Maura
McAdam
Working Definition of Entrepreneurship

“Entrepreneurship is a way of thinking, reasoning and

acting that is opportunity obsessed, holistic in
approach and leadership balanced” (Timmons, 1999:
27).
Entrepreneurship is a Multi-step Process

Recognize Evaluate Exploit

Opportunities
Entrepreneurship as a Creative Process
• Opportunity recognition is part of converting an
idea to a means of creating social value

• What is needed to recognize opportunities?

– Background: knowledge of unmet needs
– Creativity to generate ideas
– Creativity to convert them to opportunities

Creativity
Background
and Knowledge Ideas Opportunities
Theoretical Foundation -Israel Kirzner (1973)

• Entrepreneurs have…“the ability to notice …opportunities

that have hitherto been overlooked”.

• They are driven by entrepreneurial alertness.

• This is a distinctive set of perceptual and cognitive processing

skills that direct the opportunity identification process

• Kirzner, I., 1973, Competition and Entrepreneurship, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Kirzner, I., 1979, Perception, Opportunity, and Profit, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
 An Opportunity is:

• Information or a situation that has come into effect, outside the control or
influence of an entrepreneur….that the entrepreneur thinks (perceives) is
the source for a new business venture

• The immediate response to this ‘catalyst’ is an IDEA…which then needs to

be elaborated

• Converting an idea into a business opportunity is the key element of the

process of business creation

• Entrepreneurs are attuned to opportunity (Kirzner, 1973)

6
 Opportunity Recognition

• Shane and Venkataraman (2000) suggests that entrepreneurship

occurs at the ‘nexus of individual and opportunity - building on the
theme of opportunity alertness’ (Kirnzer, 1973).

• According to Shane (2003) entrepreneurship is not a personal

attribute of an individual but an event; the individual’s reaction to an
opportunity to generate profit.
 Discovered VS Created
• The discovery approach aligns
with the positivist school of
thought predominantly
characteristic of North American
researchers
• Opportunities exist independent
of the entrepreneur and so are
discoverable.
• Drawing upon the work of Kirzner
1979), the differentiating factor
between entrepreneurs and non-
entrepreneurs is entrepreneurial
alertness- ability to see gaps in
the market
• The opportunity are created
approach – typically characteristic
of the European School of
Thought and aligning with the
social constructivism view of
reality.
• Opportunities emerging as a
result of the entrepreneur’s
perception, interpretation and
understanding of the
environment (Gartner et al.,
2003)