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Opportunities, organizations, and entrepreneurship.

Call for Papers: Strategic Entrepreneurship Issue on <st1:place w:st="on">Opportunity</st1:place> Formation and Exploitation

Sharon Alvarez (<st1:placename w:st="on">Ohio</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">State</st1:placetype> <st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype>) and Jay Barney (<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Ohio</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">State</st1:placetype> <st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place>)

            How are opportunities to generate economic profits formed?  How do they come into being and assume an identity?  Do the origins of opportunities have an impact on how they are exploited?  Do different types of opportunities have different impacts on industries, on technological innovation, or on society as a whole?  While scholars have asked a broad range of questions about entrepreneurship, questions about the relationship between opportunities, organizations, and entrepreneurship remain under examined.

The purpose of this special issue of Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal is to focus attention on the causes and consequences of opportunity formation and exploitation.  We aim to sharpen scholars' collective understanding of how entrepreneurial opportunities are formed, how they are exploited, and how the combination of opportunity formation and exploitation affects the survival and growth of new ventures.  Some questions central to this research effort include:

1. What types of environments spawn economically viable opportunities? 
2.  What characterizes a "promising opportunity?" 
3. Can the opportunity formation/exploitation process limit entrepreneurial efforts?  
4. Do some opportunities require organizing to exploit early-mover advantages, and if so, how viable are these firms?
5. How do organizations learn over time about an opportunity space? 
6. How do successful ventures re-interpret their purpose, re-position themselves, and re-organize to sustain alignment between the organization and the opportunities they seek to form and exploit?
7.  How do the origins of an opportunity and the process of forming an organization to exploit an opportunity interact? 
8. How do human skills and collective competences both influence and emerge from the opportunity formation/exploitation process?  How are organizational capabilities forged as a firm assumes a more coherent identity?
9. When and how does the formation/exploitation process lead from flexibility to commitment? 
10. How do successful nascent enterprises reduce ambiguity without committing themselves to paths that later prove too hazardous?  How do they develop and institutionalize productive routines when the definition of their niche and boundaries are moving targets?
11. How does an emerging enterprise locate itself in a web of social connections, forge the social capital it needs to survive, and legitimate its existence?
12. How do entrepreneurs and/or entrepreneurial teams form opportunities, and choose among them?
13. How does the choice and definition of an opportunity affect the formation of an organization intended to exploit it?
14. What is the process by which nascent organizations exploit initial opportunities?

These questions all focus on forming and exploiting opportunities that result in the creation of organizations and the effects of opportunities and organizations on  industries and society.  By directing attention to the specific challenge of organizing to form and exploit an opportunity, we wish to highlight the unique contribution that strategic entrepreneurship can make to the broader, inter-disciplinary research conversation about entrepreneurship. 

In the newly evolving tradition of Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, we welcome both empirical and theoretical papers that seek to break new ground and move beyond normal science.  We especially encourage papers that bring together multiple strands of research, multiple disciplinary perspectives, and multiple methodologies in addressing these, and related, questions.  We actively promote submissions that aim to launch new lines of inquiry, re-direct the trajectory of a current theory stream, and/or challenge long-held assumptions and empirical findings. 

The due date for submissions is April 1, 2008.  Please submit papers to:

            Sharon A. Alvarez

            <st1:personname w:st="on">alvarez_42@cob.osu.edu</st1:personname>

Sharon A. Alvarez

Professor of Entrepreneurship

<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Max</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">M.</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">Fisher</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">College</st1:placetype></st1:place> of Business

The <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Ohio</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">State</st1:placetype> <st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place>

(614) 688 - 8289

<st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">2100 Neil Avenue #850</st1:address></st1:street>

<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Columbus</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">OH</st1:state> <st1:postalcode w:st="on">43210</st1:postalcode></st1:place>