Exploitation Of Opportunities Research Articles

Opportunity Exploitation in Times of the COVID-19 Pandemic – The Importance of Dynamic Capabilities and the Entrepreneur’s Characteristics

Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to answer the question of how entrepreneurs can take advantage of and exploit the conditions and opportunities resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Methodology: In the paper, we apply the conceptual review method in order to review extant knowledge, identifying important research gaps, and propose a conceptual framework for the research. Findings: We propose a conceptual framework of the recognition and exploitation of business opportunities during the COVID-19 pandemic. The framework assumes the influence of specific dynamic capabilities (strategic foresight – at the strategic level and innovation, self-structured and relational capabilities – at the operational level) and the entrepreneur’s key characteristics (being intuitive, having the ability to learn – especially in the field of crisis management, being innovative, having leadership competencies and having the ability to use advanced digital technologies) on the identification, creation and exploitation of opportunities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Research limitations: The main limitation results from the dynamism of the pandemic situation. Therefore, our results need further empirical verification. Practical implications: The model provides managerial implications for entrepreneurs responsible for decisions and actions during the pandemic crisis. We underline the importance of the development of entrepreneurs’ own competencies as well as the development of the competencies of their employees in the context of crisis management. We especially suggest that managers develop leadership competencies which relate to the competence of how to delegate powers and build empowerment in order to take advantage of the opportunities resulting from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. To exploit opportunities effectively, they should be recognized early, and therefore entrepreneurs should consider the benefits of using intuition in this area. Value: The special value of the paper can be seen in the context of the analysis. There is a shortage of studies identifying the impact of dynamic capabilities and the entrepreneur’s characteristics on the exploitation of opportunities during the specific situation of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Why do disequilibria exist? An ontological study of Kirznerian economics

AbstractIn his influential critique of mainstream economics, Israel Kirzner rejected the notion of equilibrated economies in an attempt to develop a realistic account of the workings of entrepreneurial markets. Key to Kirznerian analysis are the arguments that (i) economies do not equilibrate because there always exist unexploited opportunities, and (ii) opportunities remain unexploited until ‘entrepreneurially alert’ individuals discover them. This paper draws from Tony Lawson’s philosophy of economics to explain that Kirznerian economics is no more realistic than mainstream. According to Lawson, it is the ontological commitment to closed systems thinking—not superficial theoretical features such as equilibrium—that makes mainstream economics unrealistic. I argue that Kirzner’s theoretical system similarly presupposes a closed system ontology. Whereas the mainstream worldview presumes the instant exploitation of opportunities, the Kirznerian worldview presumes their delayed yet unavoidable exploitation. The ontological critique of Kirznerian economics simultaneously facilitates the reorientation of entrepreneurship theory towards genuinely realistic modes of thought. This is feasible once we acknowledge the non-empirical ontology of ‘entrepreneurial opportunity’ and concomitant fallibility of the ‘entrepreneurial imagination’: opportunities remain unexploited because (inter alia) their existence is known only after their actualisation. The existence of economic disequilibria does not require non-actors who are blind to opportunities, and there is no mysterious force of ‘entrepreneurial alertness’ guaranteeing their eventual exploitation and inevitable movement towards economic equilibria.

Modeling the Institutional Factors Affecting the Exploitation of Entrepreneurial Opportunities in the Sports Tourism Industry, using an Interpretive-Structural Approach

The purpose of this study is to examine the most important institutional factors that support the exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities within the sports tourism industry.The present study is a qualitative research based on data gathered from available documentary studies and semi-structured interviews conducted with 35experts in the field of sports tourism and sports entrepreneurship in Iran. The interpretive structural model (ISM) was used to analyze the data.According to the results of the research, 74 indicators were identified and classified under 11 institutional factors, including rule of law, government policies, social norms, social values, social beliefs, expert knowledge promotion, social knowledge promotion, public sector support, private sector support, complementary attraction,and information technology, at five hierarchical levels. Government policies and public sector support were identified as fifth-level factors that act as the model’s cornerstone. Finally, the research results suggest that for the growth of the sports tourism industry in developing countries such as Iran, other identified factors must also be involved in the growth of this industry.In this regard, the existence of an appropriate legal,normative, supportive, and educational environment will affect the ability and willingness of market participants to identify and take advantage of entrepreneurial opportunities in the emerging sports tourism industry.

Portfolios of learning in entrepreneurial internationalisation

By adopting a process approach to entrepreneurial internationalisation, we longitudinally study eleven case firms, discussing entrepreneurial learning as a portfolio of different sources of learning underpinning the exploration and exploitation of international opportunities. First, we identify the most recurring combinations of learning sources: (i) customer-centred learning with either learning by doing/trial and error or market-specific learning; (ii) imitative learning with relational learning and/or learning by doing; (iii) searching with networking learning and/or customer-centred learning. Second, we uncover instances of opportunity exploitation “looping back” to novel exploration via customer-centred, imitative, and grafting learning. Empirical results are systematised within a set of Propositions to be tested in future research.

Configuring foreign market knowledge and opportunity recognition capabilities to predict the performance of export-manufacturing firms

ABSTRACT Export-manufacturing firms survive and ultimately succeed when they can accumulate, harvest,and utilise foreign knowledge to better marshal the capabilities to recognise opportunities. Prior studies are replete with a single solution by combining foreign market knowledge (FMK) and firm performance. A shift from contingent theory to the configurational approach suggests that there are multiple solutions available to achieve intended outcomes. Based on the equifinality assumption, we configure FMK in conjunction with opportunity recognition capabilities to predict performance. In total, 382 export-manufacturing firms were investigated by employing fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) and necessary condition analysis (NCA). Salient findings suggest that young firms achieve superior performance from foreign business and institutional knowledge by enhancing opportunity exploration capability, whereas mature firms succeed from internationalisation knowledge and nurturing opportunity exploitation capability. The study is one of which that contributes to the methodology by introducing fsQCA and NCA in the knowledge management literature.

Is shame-proneness the missing link between social norms, policymaking and productive entrepreneurship?

PurposeThe purpose of the paper is to establish the need to study the shame-proneness trait of entrepreneurs – what is it and why is it important to study.Design/methodology/approachIn this conceptual paper, the authors argue that shame-proneness is an important understudied trait of entrepreneurs and put up a case for further research. The authors argue that shame-proneness moderates the effect of social acceptability on opportunity exploitation decisions. The authors also argue that productive entrepreneurship can be promoted and unproductive entrepreneurship can be prevented through policy intervention, and the level of intervention can be determined by knowing the shame-proneness level of entrepreneurs.FindingsThe key argument is the following: an entrepreneur is homo economicus and homo sociologicus, i.e. she is driven both by rational economic value consideration and by the prevalent social norms, which influence opportunity exploitation decisions. Since shame enforces compliance with social norms, it is vital to study entrepreneurs' shame-proneness to understand entrepreneurial founding across different regions. Knowing the level of shame-proneness of entrepreneurs in a given region would help the government devise effective interventions to promote productive entrepreneurship and deter unproductive or destructive entrepreneurship.Originality/valueThis paper is an original creation of the authors.

The strategic management and its relationship with organizational success: Empirical study on the pharmaceutical industry sector in Jordan: التجديد الاستراتيجي وعلاقته بالنجاح التنظيمي: دراسة ميدانية على قطاع الصناعة الدوائية في الأردن

The study aims to test and evaluate the relationship between strategic renewal and organizational success of the pharmaceutical industry sector companies in Jordan. The descriptive and analytical approach was used. and the study population consists of (1000) leaders and managers in the top and middle management level in the pharmaceutical industries sector companies in Jordan. And a random sample was chosen of (420) participants. In order to reach the objectives of the study, a questionnaire was developed to collect data. The study concluded that the independent variable, which is strategic renewal, is available in the companies at a high level. Where the exploration of opportunities came in the first rank, which corresponds to a great degree of appreciation with a mean (4.03).Then came the coordinated strategic action, strategic imagination, the exploitation of opportunities, and the genesis of new ideas, ranked respectively in terms of relative importance. It was found that the researched companies achieved a high level of organizational success with an overall average of (3.81), in addition to the existence of a statistically significant correlation between strategic renewal and organizational success, and the study recommended maintaining the level of practical application of strategic renewal in the pharmaceutical industry sector companies in Jordan. And that is through practical steps that companies follow and work to develop and sustain the level of organizational success by developing and strengthening the process of strategic renewal in all functional areas of companies.

Motivational foundations of identifying and exploiting entrepreneurial opportunities

PurposeMotivation can serve as the engine that turns intention into action, and, as such, is indispensable in the early phase of the entrepreneurial process, where opportunity recognition and exploitation are key. However, research in this area has so far shed a selective spotlight on specific facets of entrepreneurial motivation, whereas the consideration of basic motives has been widely neglected. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to illuminate the basic motivational foundations of one core aspect of entrepreneurial behavior, namely opportunity recognition.Design/methodology/approachThe study examined how motivation influences the process of recognizing and exploiting entrepreneurial opportunities in a sample of 312 managing directors and managing partners of small and medium-sized enterprises. Opportunity recognition and exploitation were assessed by two different measures: one evaluating the objective number of recognized and realized business opportunities, the other assessing the perceived proficiency in identifying and exploiting entrepreneurial opportunities. Implicit and explicit facets of basic motivation were measured using a comprehensive assessment of human needs.FindingsFindings show that entrepreneurs' achievement motive is an important driver in both the identification and exploitation of opportunity. The power motive affects the perceived ability to exploit business opportunities. Interestingly, the explicit affiliation motive showed an inhibitory effect on the perceived ability of opportunity identification, whereas implicit affiliation motive is affecting the number of recognized and realized business opportunities positively.Originality/valueThis research clearly highlights the preeminence of basic motivational factors in explaining individual early-stage entrepreneurial behavior, making them a prime target for training interventions.

Technology and Entrepreneurial Marketing Decisions During COVID-19.

The prime concern of this study is to explore how technology influences entrepreneurial marketing decisions during the world pandemic (COVID-19). The study uses a sample of 127 SMEs from Bangladesh. Data were collected by sending out questionnaires electronically and by mail. Smart PLS (SEM) 3.0 was used to analyse the data following the quantitative method. The study reveals positive and significant relationships between entrepreneurial opportunity recognition, opportunity development and opportunity exploitation with their entrepreneurial marketing decisions. It also claims that entrepreneurial passion mediates the relationship between entrepreneurial opportunity recognition and opportunity development with their entrepreneurial marketing decisions. However, entrepreneurial passion does not mediate the relationship between entrepreneurial opportunity exploitation and entrepreneurial marketing decisions. The study offers researchers a broader and more wide-ranging view of the importance of artificial intelligence in small firms. Researchers, educators and practitioners will benefit from the findings. The analyses are more complex and varied than the methodologies used in most of the limited previous research.

Lean startup for opportunity exploitation: adoption constraints and strategies in technology new ventures

PurposeMost studies investigating the adoption of lean startup (LS) practices by technology new ventures focus on software startups in mature entrepreneurial ecosystems and disregard their applicability for opportunity exploitation in other technological backgrounds. This study contributes to this research stream by exploring how Brazilian technology new ventures (in different technological fields) tentatively adopt LS to exploit opportunities and whether LS is suitable to their emerging economy context.Design/methodology/approachThe authors adopt an exploratory multiple-case study based on qualitative data collection and analysis of nine Brazilian biotechnology, engineering and software startups.FindingsThe study shows how technology new ventures tackle the activities of opportunity exploitation – namely, developing a product or service, acquiring human resources, gathering financial resources and setting up the organization – by leveraging LS tools and practices for business model validation; also, it identifies six contextual constraints hindering the systematic adoption of LS and reveals how technology new ventures cope with such constraints in their early stages by integrating LS with complementary strategies and practices. Furthermore, the study reveals that the systematic and comprehensive adoption of LS nurtures the development of an entrepreneurial experimental capability to explore opportunities in a quasi-scientific and hypothesis-driven fashion.Originality/valueThe study investigates how Brazilian engineering, biotechnology and software startups exploit opportunities and overcome constraints to business model validation through the combined adoption of LS and complementary strategies and practices and provides a set of propositions to guide future research.

Entrepreneurial lean thinking for sustainable business modeling: a\xa0workshop design for incumbent firms

In times of increasing concerns and extensive political debates about social and environmental problems, incumbent firms are obliged to reduce their negative environmental impact by implementing sustainable business model innovation. Yet, realizing more sustainable business model variants entails several complexities and associated challenges that need to be overcome. To support this task, this article takes an entrepreneurship perspective on sustainable business model innovation and combines literature of business models and entrepreneurial lean thinking (ELT). In doing so, it derives a workshop design grounded in contemporary theory with state-of-the-art tools and methods. The workshop is framed as a stage-gate process facilitating the notions of ELT with iterative cycles of ‘create, test, and improve’ and spans the phases of opportunity identification, opportunity evaluation, opportunity development through sustainable business model design, and decision of opportunity exploitation. The article shows that ELT is an appropriate yet underutilized approach for sustainable business modeling. Further, it discusses how the workshop supports opportunities and mitigate pitfalls of ELT for sustainable business modeling. As such, the findings have theoretical implications for the intersection of sustainability and lean approaches in innovation research as well as implications for practitioners by providing a comprehensive framework to support sustainable business model innovation.

Social Entrepreneurship: A New Genre of Entrepreneurship

Purpose: Social entrepreneurship has evolved as a domain of great significance for researchers. The positive impact of social entrepreneurship on alleviating social problems has already been proven. Traditionally, entrepreneurship has been viewed as an entrepreneur's logical response to the opportunities created by the dynamic competitive environment and thus generate profits for individuals or organizations by exploiting the opportunities. This research investigates whether social entrepreneurship is a new genré of entrepreneurship and how it differs from traditional entrepreneurship. 
 Methods: Followed by the archive method of research, this article establishes the legitimacy of social entrepreneurship as a separate academic field and explores several factors, e.g., mission, identification, and exploitation of opportunity, and resource strategy is differentiating social entrepreneurship from its commercial counterparts. 
 Implications: The study findings would help policymakers develop the institutional framework for supporting the social venture development process and bringing desired policy reforms to encourage social entrepreneurs' sufficient encouragement and motivation.

A Synthetic Model of Disruption and Experimentation

This paper examines how a firm's choice of the type of experiment impacts on its potential exploitation of new technological opportunities. It does so in the context of the failure of successful firms (or disruption) where the literature has informally suggested that firms undertake errors in experimental choice (in particular, choosing experiments that involved biased signals). It is shown that firms will generically choose biased over unbiased experiments even when there are no differences in their relative costs. This is done to better inform decisions regarding the exploitation of technological opportunities. It is shown that these choices can differ between incumbents and entrants based on their fundamentals as well as because of the anticipation of competition between them.

A Synthetic Model of Disruption and Experimentation

This paper examines how a firm's choice of the type of experiment impacts on its potential exploitation of new technological opportunities. It does so in the context of the failure of successful firms (or disruption) where the literature has informally suggested that firms undertake errors in experimental choice (in particular, choosing experiments that involved biased signals). It is shown that firms will generically choose biased over unbiased experiments even when there are no differences in their relative costs. This is done to better inform decisions regarding the exploitation of technological opportunities. It is shown that these choices can differ between incumbents and entrants based on their fundamentals as well as because of the anticipation of competition between them. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

The Moral Intelligence of the Worker and Its Impact on the Organizational Prowess: An Exploratory Study of the Opinions of a Sample of Kufa Cement Plant Workers

This research aims to identify the impact of the moral intelligence of the worker in its dimensions (sympathy, conscience, self-censorship) in enhancing the organizational prowess in its dimensions represented by (exploring opportunities, exploiting opportunities, flexibility at work) in the Kufa cement factory, as the research problem lies in the extent of interest. In addition to the relationship between them, the importance of research is highlighted in diagnosing the impact of moral intelligence of the worker in its dimensions in enhancing organizational skill in its dimensions, and in order to achieve the goal of the research, a sample of workers in the Kufa cement plant was selected and the researcher relied on the questionnaire as a tool to collect the necessary data and in order to complete the research and achieve the objectives it seeks, (144) questionnaires were distributed, the researcher obtained (140) a questionnaire valid for statistical analysis, and the research included two hypotheses, the statistical program (SPSS v. 23) was used, and the research reached a set of conclusions. The ingenuity generally represents the extent of control and effectiveness of smart organizations in their development process in order to reach advanced ranks of advancement and progress, with a basic ability that requires exploration and exploitation of available opportunities and work to reduce difficulties, threats and disposal Ones at work.

The Effect of Board Overlap on Firm Behavior

The staggered introduction of Corporate Opportunity Waivers (COWs) in nine US states since 2000 reduced legal risk to directors serving on multiple boards and increased intra-industry board overlap in firms characterized by intensive R&D activity. More board overlap results in a higher return on assets, higher profit margins, and higher sales revenues in spite of reduced factor inputs. The higher profitability is observed equally for new board overlap with and without own-board alteration, which rules out improved board quality as an explanation. Instead, higher profitability appears to originate in reduced firm rivalry measured by less innovation activity and increased product market segmentation rather than the synergetic exploitation of more and better corporate opportunities.

The Effect of Board Overlap on Firm Behavior

The staggered introduction of Corporate Opportunity Waivers (COWs) in nine US states since 2000 reduced legal risk to directors serving on multiple boards and increased intra-industry board overlap in firms characterized by intensive R&D activity. More board overlap results in a higher return on assets, higher profit margins, and higher sales revenues in spite of reduced factor inputs. The higher profitability is observed equally for new board overlap with and without own-board alteration, which rules out improved board quality as an explanation. Instead, higher profitability appears to originate in reduced firm rivalry measured by less innovation activity and increased product market segmentation rather than the synergetic exploitation of more and better corporate opportunities.

Growth, Concentration and Inequality in a Unified Schumpeter Mark I + II model

I develop a simple Schumpeterian agent-based model where industries are born and evolve endogenously and use it to study the interrelation between technological change, economic growth, market concentration and inequality. This theoretical model combines features from the Schumpeter Mark I (centering around the entrepreneur) and Mark II model (emphasizing the innovative capacities of firms), and is capable of reproducing a large set of stylized facts concerning growth, market concentration, inequality and productivity. Among others, the model can reproduce the industry life-cycle, a Kuznets curve, a Piketty-style increase of inequality in “mature” economies, as well as recent stylized facts on “declining business dynamism”. I conduct an extensive policy analysis to identify the parameters that produce these stylized facts in the model. Notably, the empirically-grounded assumption that the difficulty to imitate a firm depends on its technological distance to the imitator can explain prominent stylized facts of economic development since the 1980s. However, growth in the number of industries triggered by the exploitation of new technological opportunities can prove to be a counteracting force to these tendencies in the short run. Thus, the model suggests a wave-like evolution of growth, inequality and market concentration centered around advances in basic research.

The Role of Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy and Entrepreneurial Passion in Business Performance

Small enterprises contribute significantly to the economic growth and prosperity in countries (Birch, 1987). The field of entrepreneurship represents an increasingly dynamic productive force in the economy (Gavron et al., 1998). Various entrepreneurship researchers opposed the construct of entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE), defined as an individual's belief in his or her ability to achieve various entrepreneurial tasks (Miao, Qian and Ma, 2017). Many studies have found positive relationships between ESE and entrepreneurial intention. On the contrary, there are some ambiguity on relationship between ESE and entrepreneur's post- start up performance (McGee et al. 2009). One of the affective entrepreneurial dimension is passion. Many researchers have opposed passion as a key element of entrepreneurial effort (Cardon et al., 2009; Chen et al., 2009) because it is able to bring up creativity and the recognition of new information patterns critical to the encounter and exploitation of encouraging opportunities (Baron, 2008; Cardon et al. 2013). However, there is little research focusing on entrepreneurial passion (EP), leading to business performance (Cardon et al. 2013). Thus, this research clarify how entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) effect to business performance, and entrepreneurial passion (EP) may vary the ESE- business performance relationship as a mediator. Keywords: Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy, Entrepreneurial Passion, Business Performance

Managerial market timing: What is the pot size for long-term shareholders assuming firm management acts in their best interest and does have an informational advantage?

Using a stochastic model, this paper quantifies the potential value gain, for a diversified long-term shareholder, from market timing by trustworthy managers with superior information. If firms have flexibility and can issue or buy back shares up to 10% of their market capitalization, perfect market timing can yield an annualized average value gain between 0.07% (in a fair low-opportunity market) and 7.51% (in a fair high-opportunity market). With an error rate of 25%, the annual gains amount to −0.01% and 3.51%. Flexibility and management skill are key: long-term investors should grant limited flexibility to firm managers, and managers should avoid too prompt exploitation of opportunities due to price pressure effects.