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What is an Entrepreneurial Opportunity?

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Abstract

The nature and source of entrepreneurial opportunity are important issues for understanding how markets function and come into being. In addition to describing the forum held on the topic and summarizing the contributions of the articles that appear in the special issue, this article shares a number of lessons learned during the workshop and the editorial process. We explore three of the most important reasons for confusion about the opportunity construct: (1) the “objectivity” of opportunity, (2) the perceived importance of one particular individual in determining the direction of the social world and (3) what distinguishes the sub-class of “entrepreneurial” opportunity from the broader category of opportunity in general. Finally, we offer some directions for future research by illuminating important issues that emerged from the workshop but that remain largely unanswered by the papers of this special issue.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hankamer School of Business, Baylor University, Waco, TX, 76798-8006, USA

    Jeffery S. McMullen

  2. Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, 80309-0419, USA

    Lawrence A. Plummer

  3. School of Public Policy, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, 22030, USA

    Zoltan J. Acs

  4. Max Planck Institute for Economics, Jena, Germany

    Zoltan J. Acs

Authors
  1. Jeffery S. McMullen
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  2. Lawrence A. Plummer
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  3. Zoltan J. Acs
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Correspondence to Jeffery S. McMullen.

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McMullen, J.S., Plummer, L.A. & Acs, Z.J. What is an Entrepreneurial Opportunity?. Small Bus Econ 28, 273–283 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-006-9040-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-006-9040-z

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