Chapter 6: So What Is an Entrepreneurial Opportunity?

Interest in opportunity identification and shaping is growing among entrepreneurship scholars. Some even suggest that this topic represents the domain of entrepreneurship as an academic discipline. Despite increased interest, the operational measures and sampling used in research rarely reflect the theory guiding the research. Disconnections between theory and measurement present serious threats to advancing knowledge about the opportunity identification process and threaten the discipline’s claims of distinctive domain and scholarly rigor. This chapter reviews the dominant theoretical conceptualizations of entrepreneurial opportunity and examines key issues regarding measurement. An operational measure is suggested to differentiate entrepreneurial opportunities from other kinds of business opportunities.