Thanks to Per for sharing the paper summary and links. Nicolai Foss and I have a paper forthcoming in the same AMP symposium (which emerged from the terrific 2016 "Opportunity Wars" AOM session organized by Sharon Alvarez). Our perspective is very similar to Per's though we use different terminology and emphasize different aspects of the problem. We argue, like Per, that entrepreneurial beliefs (about present conditions, possible futures, and the entrepreneur's ability to bring about a preferred state of affairs) are tacit, subjective, and personal but market conditions, scientific and technical considerations, and other external conditions are objective. As the saying goes: reality bats last. Of course, the results of entrepreneurial action must themselves be interpreted, subjectively, for adjustments to be made. But both internal, subjective factors and external, objective ones are at play.
We differ from Per in our recommendation to drop the opportunity construct altogether. Our concern is that the language of opportunity draws attention away from the fundamental uncertainty that surrounds all human action and the role of understanding, interpretation, and intuition -- we use the Knightian term "judgment" -- in entrepreneurial action. We suggest "Beliefs, Actions, and Results" as an alternative conceptual framework (but we find Per's concept of external enablers very useful).
Our approach, while radical, helps navigate the thicket of recent opportunity debates. As we put it in the paper: "Do entrepreneurs discover? Yes: they discover resources, customers, competitors, and causal relationships. Do entrepreneurs create? Yes: they create firms, products, business plans, interpretations of mechanisms and relationships, and so on. But no one discovers or creates 'opportunities'!"
The paper is not yet on the AMP in-press site but there is a copy on SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3126527.
Peter
Peter G. Klein | Entrepreneurship | Hankamer School of Business
W. W. Caruth Chair and Professor
Director | Entrepreneurship PhD Program
Associate Editor | Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal
Baylor University | One Bear Place #98011 | Waco, TX 76798-8011
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