Entrepreneurial journey: Emergence from entrepreneurial intent to opportunity realization

Abstract

Entrepreneurial journey of new business creation starts when a business opportunity is discovered by nascent entrepreneurs. There are many obstacles along the journey, and must be an 'internal driving force' to create entrepreneurial actions for problem solving. This paper develops a new concept of 'entrepreneurial intent' as an internal driving force of opportunity realization with 'drive' (sense of crisis) and 'directivity' (sense of opportunity). Furthermore, it presents a theory of the underlying entrepreneurial process with entrepreneurial intent. Case study methods and grounded theory building are utilized. The results based on cases from high-tech venture firms in Korea show that entrepreneurial intent toward a new opportunity is emerged to collective actions for combining new resources to create new values. The entrepreneurial intent is the extreme level of achievement motivation which is comprised of arousal, direction, and duration (reducing the cognition gap), and drives 3C effects such as 'channeling', 'concentrating' and 'continuing' of entrepreneurial actions. The entrepreneurial actions, in turn, make more chances of serendipity in the external process of networking and gaining resources (reducing the resource gap), and the internal process of value creation. Value creation finally converts discovered opportunities into realized opportunities to complete the entrepreneurial journey.