"What is an opportunity?": From theoretical mystification to everyday understanding

Expressions about opportunities are used unproblematically in everyday contexts. Yet, the question “What is an opportunity?” has posed a difficult riddle in the academic study of entrepreneurship. Drawing on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, we explain that such perplexities are common when words are removed from ordinary language and intellectuals try to grasp what they name. Approaching the opportunity riddle differently, we ask, “How do entrepreneurs use the word opportunity?” and elucidate an actualization theory of entrepreneurship attuned to the everyday understandings that underlie the meaningful use of the word. Bringing implicit understandings to the foreground contributes to (1) the dissolution of the mystification over the nature of “opportunity”, (2) the clarification of the conceptual foundations of entrepreneurship theory, and (3) the reorientation of the field toward more conceptually precise ways of thinking about Knightian uncertainty, entrepreneurial success, and the entrepreneurial process. This paper also contributes to the methodology of management studies, by demonstrating how attention to the logic of ordinary language can alert us to theoretical dead-ends and enable the development of theory that bridges academic and everyday understandings

An opportunity to profit from recent entrepreneurship theory

We offer a brief rejoinder to a recent critique published in the Journal of Business Venturing Insights. We look past the unprofessional tone of the critique to seek opportunities to clarify the positions we took in our work and to explain the motivations behind them. We do so by articulating seven questions worthy of clarification. We conclude our rejoinder with a discussion about the notion of a “secret formula” for publishing novel theory and offer a few words of encouragement to other theorists interested in more constructive endeavors, such as building conceptual foundations for our field

“Clipping an angel’s wings”: on the value and limitations of philosophy in management research

Ramoglou and McMullen (2022) offers a logically rigorous extension and refinement of earlier work on the conceptual foundations of entrepreneurship theory – the actualization perspective of entrepreneurship. Leunbach (2023) and Mitchell, Israelsen, Mitchell & Hua (2023) have crafted two thoughtful and highly scholarly commentaries that help augment this theoretical perspective. The backbone of our rejoinder is the rebuttal of Leunbach’s criticism of our rejection of metaphysics. We clarify that there is nothing problematic with metaphysics in the sense of abstract theorizing, philosophical questions, or uncertain answers. What is nevertheless problematic is the metaphysics that emerge when linguistic confusions derail our academic imagination. In defending our approach, we further demonstrate that the practice of “clipping an angel’s wings” – i.e., the practice of disciplining our theoretical imagination by means of philosophical analysis – is not a purely destructive endeavor. Far from that: the analytic method has a highly constructive component as well: it helps us increase conceptual clarity by laying out the ground rules that prevent our theoretical developments from becoming “nothing but houses of cards” (Wittgenstein, 1958: 118)

A temporal typology of entrepreneurial opportunities: implications for optimal timing of entrepreneurial action

Entrepreneurial opportunities emerge and dissipate over time, yet little is known about how and why they vary in their ephemerality and what the implications of temporal variance are for the optimal timing of entrepreneurial action. Building on the actualization theory of opportunity and signal processing theory, we propose that profit possibilities exist in the convolution of consumer desire, technical feasibility, and economic viability of an innovation. Conceiving consumer desire – a necessary ingredient of any profit opportunity – as consisting of fleeting or enduring consumer preferences and fixed or variable consumer expectations, we identify four possible distributions of consumer desire over time. We then show how the interaction of these distributions with technical feasibility functions produce a temporal typology of entrepreneurial opportunities. Our analysis suggests that, despite sharing conceptual similarities in structure, each type of opportunity emphasizes a different form of asymmetry across opportunity categories, which is likely to differentially affect the optimal timing of entrepreneurial action. We conclude by pointing out how considerations of time facilitate the move away from fruitless philosophical debates and toward a more theoretically nuanced and empirically informative view of the concept

Who is a ‘non-entrepreneur’? Taking the ‘others’ of entrepreneurship seriously

In response to the absence of entrepreneurial action on behalf of non-actors, micro-oriented scholars typically tend to refuse to allocate entrepreneurial capacities to the ‘others’ of entrepreneurship. However, in contesting this explanatory practice, macro-oriented scholars counter that ‘others’ do not lack power but opportunity. This article suggests how recurrent dualisms may be fruitfully surpassed within a conceptual framework that accommodates the ontological intuitions of both theorizing tendencies. Guarding against the temptation to deny the existence of either unexercised powers or unexploited opportunities not only allows us to resist the seduction of dualisms, but also allows for the emergence of an expanded worldview that enables a more dynamic conceptualization of the entrepreneurship phenomenon. The analysis closes by recommending directions for meta-theoretical research aiming at the identification of factors that may be hindering entrepreneurship scholarship from cognizance of realist (and realistic) insights

The constructivist view of entrepreneurial opportunities: a critical analysis

The notion that opportunities exist objectively “out there” has been repeatedly assaulted by scholars who counter that opportunities are subjectively constructed or created. This paper intends to restore the balance by bringing the critical strands of inquiry themselves under critical scrutiny. Beyond the formulation of some original lines of critique and the drawing of attention to some foundational yet insufficiently studied issues, this article further contributes the following: (1) it juxtaposes a taxonomical ordering of constructivist approaches; (2) it identifies angles of complementarity and contradiction with the objectivist perspective; and (3) it brings subtle conceptual distinctions into prominence

A realist perspective of entrepreneurship: opportunities as propensities

The idea that entrepreneurial opportunities exist "out there" is increasingly under attack by scholars who argue that opportunities do not pre-exist objectively but are actively created through subjective processes of social construction. In this article, we concede many of the criticisms pioneered by the creation approach but resist abandoning the pre-existing reality of opportunities. Instead, we use realist philosophy of science to ontologically rehabilitate the objectivity of entrepreneurial opportunities by elucidating their propensity mode of existence. Our realist perspective offers an intuitive and paradox-free understanding of what it means for opportunities to exist objectively. This renewed understanding enables us to (1) explain that the subjectivities of the process of opportunity actualization do not contradict the objective existence of opportunities; (2) develop the notion of "non-opportunity;" and (3) clarify the ways through which individuals might make cognitive contact with opportunities prior to their actualization. Our actualization approach serves as a refined meta-theory for guiding future entrepreneurship research, and facilitates the revisiting of subtle conceptual issues at the core of entrepreneurial theory, such as the nature of uncertainty and "non-entrepreneurs," as well as the role played by prediction in a scientific study of entrepreneurship