Outsiders’ Eyes: How Do Immigrant Entrepreneurs Uniquely Recognize Entrepreneurial Opportunities?

Abstract

This study contributes to the literatures on opportunity recognition and immigrant entrepreneurship through an inductive content analysis of entrepreneurial journeys of immigrant entrepreneurs in the Boston area. The abduction between literatures on both opportunity recognition and immigrant entrepreneurship and the categories stemming from the data inform the provided theoretical model that explicates the opportunity recognition process of immigrant entrepreneurs. The theoretical model accentuates the role of meso context, embedded in a macro institutional environment, as a provider of external motivators, external resources and opportunities and manifests the role of individual level idiosyncratic internal motivators, internal resources and human and social capital within this meso context during the opportunity recognition process. The categories stemming from the data highlight that cognitive comparisons that immigrant entrepreneurs engage with due to their exposures to multiple contexts can serve as internal motivators. The increased variability infused to opportunity recognition research by studying how immigrant entrepreneurs recognize opportunities contributes to both generic theories on opportunity recognition and immigrant entrepreneurship literature.