OPPORTUNITY DEVELOPMENT: A SOCIO-COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE

Over the last ten years, researchers have increasingly focused on the pursuit of opportunity as one of the central acts of entrepreneurship. This chapter proposes a model of opportunity recognition which emphasizes the process through which entrepreneurs interact with their social contexts to develop opportunities, that is, to develop and shape ideas into attractive opportunities. The central research question is “how does an individual use his or her social context to recognize opportunity?” The question can be re-phrased in two parts, highlighting the two sides of the influence process. First, how do the people around the individual affect both the entrepreneurial thinking process and the opportunity ideas? And second, how does the individual structure his or her social context and use the people surrounding him or her for recognizing and pursuing opportunities?