THE ENTREPRENEUR AND HIS JOURNEY

Opportunity -- has been acknowledged as the key component of entrepreneurship.

 situations in which new goods, services, raw materials, markets, and organizing methods can
be introduced through the formation of new means, ends, or means-ends relationships.

Smith, Matthews and Schenkel (2006) ----------- 2 types of opportunities

1. Codified Opportunity

 well-documented, articulated or communicated

2. Tacit Opportunity

 difficult to codify, articulate or communicate

Hansen (2006) -----“opportunity recognition” -------- 3 distinct processes:

1. Sensing or perceiving market needs and/or underemployed resources

2. Recognizing or discovering a “fit” between particular market needs and specified resources.
3. Creating a new “fit” between heretofore separate needs and resources in the form of a
business concept.

The identification of opportunities that initiate entrepreneurial ventures

 key to the engine that starts new businesses

Opportunity recognition ---- the progenitor of both personal and societal wealth

Understanding the opportunity identification process

 Is one of the primary questions within the province of entrepreneurship.

Baum, Locke, and Smith (2001) and Rauch and Frese (2000)

 Personality -- remains an important general predictor of entrepreneurial behavior

Brunstein and Gollwitzer (1996)

 Importance of self-defining goals as they do motivate some people.

 Wishes -- are imagined future states

 Goals -- are objects or aims of actions ------- something that we want to achieve.

 Goal statement -- an investment in yourself; identifies what you want, how you will get it,
and when you will get it.

 SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time bound).

One of the secrets to achieving your goals

 Knowing how to ask for help from people who have those skills you don’t possess.

Creativity --- act of producing new ideas, approaches or actions

 key to the development of both new and existing businesses

Innovation -- generating and applying such creative ideas in some specific context.

Brainwriting.

 A person writes whatever comes to mind. At times, metaphors can also be in the process.

Prior knowledge -------- creates a knowledge corridor

 Important individual difference in the identification of entrepreneurial opportunities.

Human need ---- basic requirement that a person wishes to satisfy.

Identifying people’s needs is one of the strategies use when looking out for opportunities.