Over the last twenty years, the topic of opportunities has received an increased interest, which is not surprising given that it lies at the heart of entrepreneurship research. The business creation process is basically an opportunity development process, starting from the first glimpse of the entrepreneur’s idea and continuing until the exploitation of the opportunity. Currently, there is minimal amount of research looking at the process of opportunity development as a whole, no research investigating the opportunity as a unit of analysis and looking in-depth into what happens to the opportunity during the gestation period of a business. Opportunities are objective entities that are subjective to the entrepreneur as he or she is the one recognizing opportunities and acting upon pursuing them. In this thesis we combine more theories and separate the opportunity development process into three main stages, which are recognition, objectification and enactment and investigate each of them in-depth. We also look at how shaping or refinement is being done during the development process and how social networks influence this process.

Entrepreneurial opportunity recognition is an increasingly prevalent phenomenon. Of particular interest is the ability of promising technology based ventures to recognize and exploit opportunities. Recent research drawing on the Austrian economic theory emphasizes the importance of knowledge, particularly market knowledge, behind opportunity recognition. While insightful, this research has tended to overlook those interrelationships that exist between different types of knowledge (technology and market knowledge) as well as between a firm’s knowledge base and its entrepreneurial orientation. Additional shortfalls of prior research include the ambiguous definitions provided for entrepreneurial opportunities, oversight of opportunity exploitation with an extensive focus on opportunity recognition only, and the lack of quantitative, empirical evidence on entrepreneurial opportunity recognition. In this dissertation, these research gaps are addressed by integrating Schumpeterian opportunity development view with a Kirznerian opportunity discovery theory as well as insights from literature on entrepreneurial orientation. A sample of 85 new biotechnology ventures from the United States, Finland, and Sweden was analyzed. While leaders in all 85 companies were interviewed for the research in 2003-2004, 42 firms provided data in 2007. Data was analyzed using regression analysis. The results show the value and importance of early market knowledge and technology knowledge as well as an entrepreneurial company posture for subsequent opportunity recognition. The highest numbers of new opportunities are recognized in firms where high levels of market knowledge are combined with high levels of technology knowledge (measured with a number of patents). A firm’s entrepreneurial orientation also enhances its opportunity recognition. Furthermore, the results show that new ventures with more market knowledge are able to gather more equity investments, license out more technologies, and achieve higher sales than new ventures with lower levels of market knowledge. Overall, the findings of this dissertation help further our understanding of the sources of entrepreneurial opportunities, and should encourage further research in this area.

A significant proportion of the population engages in entrepreneurial behavior but many ventures do not survive beyond startup thus decreasing the pool of entrepreneurs available to contribute to the economy. Opportunity recognition is central to entrepreneurial success and the improper delineation of opportunities is cited as a leading cause of venture failure. There is a logical link between creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. The goal of the researcher in this study was to explore the relationships between CPS training and the generation of entrepreneurial ideas. The investigation studied the relationship of training in creative problem solving (CPS) to the opportunity identification skills of entrepreneurial learners. It was hypothesized that CPS training would positively impact attitudes relating to divergent thinking, would increase the number of opportunities identified and would increase the quality of opportunities identified. The tutorial was targeted at novice entrepreneurs who were in the initial stages of identifying an opportunity. Quality at this early stage in the venture formation process was defined as the degree to which the idea meshed with the learner's interests and passions and the extent to which they possessed prior experience. An experimental research design was used and participants were randomly assigned to either a treatment or control group. There were no statistically significant differences in composition between the treatment and control groups. There were statistically significant differences found in one of the two divergent thinking constructs - the tendency to make premature evaluations. Two measures of ideational fluency were tested. No statistically significant differences were found in fluency for the post-test/pre-test measure within the treatment group or between the treatment and control group. Statistically significant differences were found in the number of unique ideas generated post-test/pre-test (within the treatment group and between the treatment and control group) and statistically significant differences were also found in the unique bottles measure (within group only). There were no statistically significant differences found in the 4 quality measures. The findings in this study have the potential to strengthen the link between the enhancement of creative performance and the generation of entrepreneurial ideas. The research also holds the potential to provide practical guidelines for use of instructional techniques for training in opportunity recognition but also more broadly across the continuum of entrepreneurship education. The objective of the training was to increase the size and the quality of the venture idea pool that entrepreneurs draw from when initiating ventures.

Background: Organizations’ ability to recognize opportunities can provide competitive advantage for organizations in changing environment. In innovation-driven countries many en-trepreneurial people are working as employees in established companies and pursuing opportunities as corporate entrepreneurs. This is a group which researchers have dis-criminated by focusing only on CEO’s and entrepreneur’s opportunity identification capability. We would like to research the topic of employees’ opportunity recognition (OpR) and to find a link with their attitudes towards entrepreneurship, something that so far was not completely investigated in the literature. Purpose: The aim of the master thesis is to examine the relationship between the employee’s atti-tudes towards entrepreneurship and their implication on their ability to recognize opportu-nities – a step before developing innovation or uniqueness, resulting in creation of compet-itive advantage to the company, presumably leading to company growth. This paper in-tends to fill the gap in the literature regarding one of the dimensions of the factors leading to company growth and analyses a different business stakeholder group – namely employees in medium-sized companies. From business perspective, it might help company leaders understand the need of encouraging entrepreneurial initiatives and encourage them with some practical suggestions. The research question is: does employees’ attitude towards en-trepreneurship affect their opportunity recognition. Method: We have chosen deductive and explanatory approach for our research because we study causal relationship between attitudes towards entrepreneurship and OpR. The primary data was collected by a self-administered electronic questionnaire. The num-ber of received responses is 53, mainly from manufacturing and service industries. Conclusion: Employees’ positive attitude towards entrepreneurship increases their opportunity identification capability.

The opportunity cost of conveyance corridors; highways, hydro lines and pipelines is the monetary value of resource uses foregone; the lost value of physical production resulting from the allocation of land to right-of-way use. Theoretical models were developed for calculating the resource uses foregone and under the criteria of measurability and availability of data, practical equations for conveyance corridors traversing agricultural and forested areas were formulated. Use of practical equations was illustrated by creating hypothetical corridors through the Municipalities of Elton and North Cypress (agricultural application) and through Township 61, Ranges 27 and 28 (forestry application). Conflict between rights-of-way and recreational areas was difficult to quantify and strict economic analysis of opportunity costs was not possible. An alternative technique of reclamation, reparation and mitigation (RRM) was therefore proposed for evaluating opportunity costs. Difficulty in defining wildlife prices and determining the effects of corridors on wildlife prevented the use of the developed economic equation. Thus the alternative technique of RRM was suggested to quantify wildlife opportunity costs. Application of the model produced a comparison of corridor opportunity costs. For a hypothetical corridor, 120 feet wide and 42 miles long traversing agricultural land the highway had a loss of $1, 087,000 and the hydro line with wooden towers a loss of $4000 with steel towers, $13,000. The pipeline had a range of opportunity costs from a benefit of $11,000 to a loss of $127,000. All values were calculated for 50 years, undiscounted. One equation was derived for all corridors in forested areas. Application of this model to a hypothetical corridor, 120 feet wide and 12.6 miles long produced for all corridors, and opportunity cost of $151,000 (calculated for 50 years undiscounted). A questionnaire inquiring about the effects of pipelines on soil productivity was sent (summer 1973) to farmers having a pipeline traversing their property. Nine percent of the respondents indicated an increase in yield due to the pipeline, 25 percent reported no change and 66 percent indicated a decrease in crop yield. However, general lack of data of effects of pipelines on soil productivity suggest the need for further study. Numerous ways are available for reducing opportunity costs of corridors; of which multiple use is one of the best. All land has potential for wildlife utilization and a review of literature suggests that corridors are suitable for wildlife production. Thus where active primary production is not possible or too costly it is recommended that steps be taken to use idle right-of-way lands for wildlife enhancement and production.

The ecology based environmental perspective implicitly suggests that population level founding rates, dissolution rates, and density levels influence the likelihood that entrepreneurs will launch new ventures within a given population domain. The central idea is that population rates and densities may act as signals to entrepreneurs regarding the viability of a new venture within a given population. Interestingly, whether or not population level factors actually influence the new venture creation process remains an open question. As such, the central purpose of this research is to utilize a cognitive approach to better understand how population level conditions and the individual differences of fear of failure and general self-efficacy influence entrepreneurs decisions to engage in entrepreneurial action. This thesis proposes a model that integrates the population rates and entrepreneurial traits perspectives by focusing on entrepreneurs' hypothetical decisions to invest in entrepreneurial opportunities given differential levels of population factors. Because this research is focused on entrepreneurial decision making an experimental methodology using conjoint analysis was selected to test the theoretical model. Fifty seven experienced entrepreneurs participated in the conjoint experiment. Results revealed a significant main effect for founding rates, dissolution rates, and population density on the entrepreneur's decision to invest in an opportunity. Specifically, our results indicated that the entrepreneurs in our sample were more likely to invest in an opportunity when founding rates were high, dissolution rates were low, and density levels were low or moderate. We found limited support for the interaction of these variables. In terms of the individual difference variables, we found support for the influence of fear of failure, but no support for the effects of general self-efficacy on the investment decision. Specifically, entrepreneurs who indicated lower levels of fear of failure were more likely to invest in the opportunity, while differential levels of general self efficacy did not enhance or reduce the probability of opportunity investment in a significant way.

Scholars of cybercrime have used social learning theory (SLT) and routine activities theory (RAT) to explain the variation in offending and victimization; however, to date, only RAT has been used to explain the specific behavior of cyberbullying. Therefore, this study combines SLT and RAT concepts to explain the cyberbullying phenomenon. Today's adolescents are exposed early to cyberspace and this has given them more opportunities to bully their peers, especially in an environment that is difficult to monitor by adults. The results from this study of a sample of Southeastern middle and high school students suggest that the opportunity component of RAT explains both cyberbullying victimization and offending, and the differential association component of SLT increases youths' likelihood of offending. Additionally, the findings suggest a correlation between victimization and offending. The results also show that the differential association-opportunity interaction increases the likelihood of offending, but the relationship was not statistically significant.

This study explores the entrepreneurial logic applied in the opportunity evaluation phase in a research-based startup company (RBSO) faced with multiple business opportunities recognized by external actors. Entrepreneurial logic, measured through the enactment of entrepreneurial behavior, is investigated from the theoretical perspectives of causation and effectuation. Making use of a qualitative, single embedded case study consisting of participant observations and interviews conducted during a seven-month period in a Swedish RBSO, this study contributes to research in the field of entrepreneurship by exploring the logic of opportunity evaluation in RBSOs. Our findings show that the combinations of causal and effectual logical patterns are applied in the opportunity evaluation process but that effectual logic prevails. The effectual logic is related to the operational aspect of the evaluation process and is applied internally while causal logic is related to the general strategic aspect and serves as a way to communicate with the company's stakeholders. The primary driver behind the prevalence of the effectual versus causal logic is uncertainty which in turn is related to the knowledge-intensive nature of the RBSO and the dynamic environment in which it operates. The causal logic is mainly found in the company’s acquisition of human resources aimed to support technology-related knowledge gain.

Every day, salespeople span boundaries, coordinate internal and external expertise, leverage social capital, mobilize the tangible and intangible resources of their firm, and try to create value for all stakeholders. Recognizing the important roles of salespeople, Evans et al. (2012) and Lassk et al. (2012) call for more research on the usage of skills, knowledge, people, strategies, expertise, and other resources of salespeople to produce the desired outcomes. Responding to their calls, this study specifically focuses on how salespeople utilize their available and finite resources across four types of customers (new customers, short term customers, long term customers, and win-back customers) to identify and qualify new sales opportunities during the prospecting stage. The dissertation focuses on seven types of resources (capturing both internal and firm related resources) available for salespeople: (1) firm tangible, (2) firm intangible, (3) firm market based, (4) present resources, (5) skills, (6) knowledge, and (7) accumulated successes. The study further explores the moderating roles of organizational identification, competitive intensity, and customer dependence on the relationship between resources utilized and performance during the prospecting stage. The resource utilization scale is developed and tested for robustness. Next, using a final dataset of 346 responses from salespeople, the results reveal that salespeople adaptively utilized various resources across new customers, short-term customers, long-term customers, and win-back (lost) customers. Overall, performance during prospecting stage are more strongly influenced by utilization of internal resources (presence, knowledge, skills and success) than firm related factors. Further, successful prospecting performance requires the usage of skills and knowledge resources with new customers, only skills resources with short-term and long-term customers, but present resources, knowledge, and firm tangible resources with win-back customers. In addition, organizational identification and competitive intensity moderate the relationship between resource utilization and prospecting performance for all customer types, whereas customer dependence is an important moderator for long-term customers. The paper makes several contributions to key areas such as resource allocations in the context of personal selling, and how firms can strategically enhance the performance of their salespeople. Theoretically, the study develops resource utilization scale, and empirically tests its effects on prospecting performance. From a managerial stand point, this dissertation offers additional insights into the effectiveness of each type of resources to plan for selective development of resources, as well as focused sales training.

In this dissertation I first develop a theoretical framework that explores different components of dynamic capabilities related to firm’s boundary-spanning linkages across two different types of inter-organizational activities - alliances and networks. I argue that there are four different subsets of dynamic capabilities simultaneously at work: alliance opportunity-sensing, alliance opportunity-seizing, network opportunity-sensing and network opportunity-seizing. Furthermore, I argue that there are significant interaction effects between these distinctive subsets driving the firm’s overall effectiveness in sensing and seizing of novel and innovative external opportunities. In order to explore potential interdependencies and draw distinctions among different dynamic capability subsets I integrate concepts from the two theoretical perspectives that often neglect the emphasis of the other - the dynamic capability view and the social network perspective. I then test the hypothesized relationships in the context of firms actively patenting in nanotechnology. Nanotechnology innovations are multidisciplinary in nature and require search and discovery across multiple inter-organizational, scientific, geographic, industry, or technological domains by a particular firm. The findings offer support for the conceptualizations of dynamic capabilities as consisting of distinct subsets of capabilities for the sensing and the seizing of external new-knowledge opportunities. The findings suggest that firm’s innovativeness in an interdisciplinary scientific field such as nanotechnology is the function of the vector of multi-dimensional dynamic capabilities that are context-specific. Furthermore, the findings also suggest that there are inherent trade-offs embedded in different dimensions of dynamic capabilities when deployed across a wide range of inter-organizational relationships.