Opportunity characteristics enabling commercialisation in high-tech environment: a study of Indian telecom start-ups

Abstract

Existing entrepreneurship research has viewed opportunity recognition from varied theoretical lenses with cognition and learning forming the core of most scholarly work. However, prior work has focused on end result (success/failure) only and more recent work has focused on opportunity recognition process only. But both the aspects need to be analysed and assessed simultaneously. We explore telecom sector in the present paper within an Indian context with the understanding that insights could be utilised by other sectors as well. We employ a detailed case study based approach to identify four characteristics of opportunities that shape the evolution of the opportunity recognition process on its path towards commercialisation. We also bring out the linkages between characteristics identified by us and existing paradigms in strategic management literature. We further propose that mental heuristics of entrepreneurs is guided by the characteristics identified by us. Our work thus contributes to both theory and practice of entrepreneurship research.