Opportunity Recognition

Provides the first empirical support for the importance of network characteristics other than size to idea identification and opportunity recognition.

The textbook contains a comprehensive presentation of tools that can be used to systematically generate innovative ideas for new business growth ("opportunities"). In practice, it can be observed that companies make considerable efforts to identify ideas for innovations that can decisively shape their industry. The reason for this is not least the knowledge that a missed wave of innovation can lead to major problems for the entire company. A central finding of business management research is that ideas for generating future growth opportunities are often not a product of chance, but the results of systematic analyses. The authors provide a structured and comprehensive overview of the most important tools for identifying new growth opportunities. They distinguish between company-related, market-related and environment-related approaches, incorporate numerous practical examples and provide application-oriented assistance with these tools. The second edition of the book incorporates the latest research findings, some examples have been updated and supplemented, and the book has been expanded to include practical application tasks for teaching and practical workshops.

Provides a forum for scholars to generate a different theory, identify promising research directions, and present important insights to a wide audience of scholars in entrepreneurship. In order to study individuals as their businesses take shape, this book located and studied nascent entrepreneurs in the process of building their enterprises.

While a strong research base on cluster assets exists, evidence on other factors such as capabilities, i.e. a local culture or networks, is anecdotal and dispersed across research streams. Nicole Röttmer sets out to identify and describe these capabilities, their impact on cluster innovativeness in the interplay with (proprietary) cluster resources and their development over time in a comprehensive model.

This book provides an understanding of ‘opportunity recognition’ as a catalyst and crux of the entrepreneurial process. Grounded in research, it introduces the key concepts at the heart of entrepreneurship theory and practice and demonstrates how entrepreneurship differs from management in language, priorities and practice. The book’s central framework is mapped around ‘seeing and seizing opportunities’, where the entrepreneur enters a situation, eventually sees an opportunity and takes it through a process of idea development into an actionable entrepreneurial initiative. This captures the book’s four core elements: person(s), environment, opportunity and process. The Entrepreneurial Process is unique in its explanation of how key concepts are related and how they can be applied practically to business models, plans and action. Case studies from real-life organizations, reflective questions and short exercises throughout encourage student learning and enable true engagement with the subject matter, building students’ entrepreneurial efficacy. A ‘one-stop shop’ of key theoretical perspectives on entrepreneurship, opportunity recognition and business modelling, this textbook is essential for undergraduate and postgraduate students on introductory entrepreneurship and enterprise courses. Its practical and applied nature also makes it suitable for MBA and executive education. Online resources include chapter-by-chapter PowerPoint slides and a test bank of questions.

The creation of new business organizations for economic prosperity is the keystone of commercial development. The study of this process has occupied the minds of scholars for centuries and the need to move from theories of entrepreneurship to the actual 'doing' of entrepreneurship is intense. Theorizing about entrepreneurship has been done across m