The interplay between market need urgency, entrepreneurial push and pull insights and opportunity confidence in the course of new venture creation in the developing country context

Abstract

This study investigates the complex relationships between market need urgency (MNU), entrepreneurial push and pull insights driven by supply (SDI) and demand (DDI), and opportunity confidence (OC), resulting in new venture creation (NVC) from the perspective of nascent entrepreneur's perceptions in the developing country context. Departing from the discovery and creation views of the entrepreneurial process, it builds on the seminal works of Sarasvathy et al. (2003) and Dimov (2007a) to examine how demand- and supply-driven insights and opportunity confidence are related, especially when nascent entrepreneurs think there is urgency for a specific need in a developing country marketplace. Using binary logistic regressions, we test the research hypotheses on a dataset of nascent entrepreneurs who were traced for four years. We find that the MNU is a subtle predictor of NVC, both directly and indirectly through OC. We also find that OC is a crucial element in accelerating entrepreneurial activity, either when there is a market need urgency or the entrepreneur has a firm opinion about the markets and technologies related to a specific product/service. The results suggest that nascent entrepreneurs operate by their perceptions of markets and technologies, yet their confidence levels play a major role in moving onto the stage of new venture creation. Furthermore, results suggest that nascent entrepreneurs' market and technology-related entrepreneurial insights, opportunity confidence, and their co-existence in distinct settings such as isolated third world countries are relatively new phenomena that require deeper investigation. Finally, this research provides implications that give entrepreneurship educators, practitioners, and policymakers informed choices to encourage entrepreneurial learning and experiencing processes specifically in higher education settings in developing countries.