Entrepreneurial opportunities are found in literature to be discovered,recognized, and created by entrepreneurs. This thesis aims to explore andexplain the influences upon entrepreneurs in terms of knowledge, and knowledgesources, in the opportunity identification stage. However, even though it isfound in literature that knowledge is a main influencer in the first stage ofthe entrepreneurial process, the approaches to explain the influences onentrepreneurs for entrepreneurial opportunities are not consistent, whichcreates confusion about the sources of knowledge that influence entrepreneurs,in combination with the type of knowledge. In order to further explore andexplain the area, research is done, and cases are formed by interviewingentrepreneurs from eleven companies. The results from the interviews are thencompared, and related back to the literature findings. In the analysis it isfound that sources such as work-experience, education, hobbies, and role modelshelp entrepreneurs to gain knowledge in the industry where he or she havestarted a venture from an opportunity. These sources of knowledge havecontributed to market pull knowledge, and it is also found that there is arelationship between prior knowledge and alertness, which has to do with theability to find useful knowledge.

Whether entrepreneurial opportunity is objectively existed or it could be deliberately created is still a disputable issue in academic filed. However, increasing number of scholars tend to conclude that entrepreneurial opportunity comes from a process of recognition, discovery and creation by alerted entrepreneurs. Based on this point, it seems to be obvious that entrepreneurs must have some kind of knowledge and abilities, poses special source of information and involved in certain social networks. So that they can easily find those opportunities that other can¡¦t. In this study, I apply Ardichivili¡¦s(2003) opportunity identification and development theory to discuss this issue through a viewpoint of human capital and social capital. Seven entrepreneurs were interviewed to conduct the survey, and the content is analyzed through six coding unit to show the following results: 1. The general human capital is intermediately positive to opportunity recognition and highly positive to opportunity development. 2. The specific human capital is highly positive to both opportunity recognition and opportunity development. 3. The weak-tie network is highly positive to opportunity recognition but low positive to opportunity development. 4. The strong-tie network is highly positive to both opportunity recognition and opportunity development. 5. Entrepreneurial human capital is mediated by social capital to have positive effects on opportunity recognition and opportunity development.

In the last twenty years, Google had a tremendous growth, from a small project of two PhD students to one of the most valuable companies on the globe. This growth is characterised by the versatile of the company, next to its search engine, Google explored many different value chains along the way. In this study, the value grid model is used to examine their movements. It can be stated that Google used, and uses, the paths/dimension as implied by Pil and Holweg (2006) to explore new opportunity and demand. The main reason why Google is able to do so is because of its board and management, who are innovative, and open-minded. Next to the top management is the appearance of Google in many different sectors and value chains a reason of their growth. The variety in businesses allows them to create a “Google experience”, and thus a competitive advantage in comparison with their main competitors who do not have this ability.

Background - Food waste is considered as a major sustainability concern as it has negative social, environmental and economic implications. Among various types of entrepreneurs, sustainable entrepreneurs are acting to resolve conjointly these three issues. Consequently, they should be willing to tackle food waste. An emerging belief in the literature is grounded on the statement that food waste can be a valuable resource and may represent opportunities for business. Despite this observation, just a few companies make use of food waste as a raw material. Purpose - The purpose of this thesis is to explore the drivers that lead to identify an entrepreneurial opportunity aiming to exploit food waste as a resource. Method - To fulfill the purpose, this thesis is of qualitative nature and follows an abductive approach. Primary data is collected through semi-structured interviews with ten entrepreneurs or intrapreneurs using food waste as a resource. Secondary data is obtained through scholarly articles, organizational reports or websites. For each of the cases, a within-case analysis is performed followed by a cross-case analysis. Conclusion - The analysis of the empirical findings resulted in the emergence of factors shared among the entrepreneurs of the sample. We recognized three drivers leading to the identification of an entrepreneurial opportunity aiming to use food waste as a resource: Awareness of the Food Waste Issue and its Potential Impact, Serendipity of Relationships and Motivate Societal Changes toward Environmental Transition. Additionally, it has been found that these drivers are moderated by two contextual factors, namely Entrepreneurial Curiosity toward Sustainability and Prior Knowledge linked to Sustainability.

Many people instinctively agree that entrepreneurial experience is a valuable property more useful in identifying new opportunities. In fact, many entrepreneurs who had started an enterprise thought that they identified a new opportunity but failed in new enterprise. This let us consider a question ¡§How entrepreneurial experience effects opportunity identification¡H¡¨ Past researches have discussed more about ¡§prior knowledge¡¨, but not deeply discussed about the content of entrepreneurial experience. It is hard to express the unique value of entrepreneurial experience and to explain the logic of the relation between entrepreneurial experience and opportunity identification. This research further describes and defines the content of entrepreneurial experience on the basis of ¡§prior knowledge¡¨ discussed by past researches, and explains the relation between entrepreneurial experience and opportunity identification. Analyzing literature, this research generalizes a conclusion that entrepreneurial experience includes ¡§start-up experience¡¨, ¡§management experience¡¨ and ¡§industry-specific experience¡¨. ¡§Start-up experience¡¨ is the most unique and is also the key point of this research. Through discussion with entrepreneur, the content of ¡§start-up experience¡¨ includes ¡§sustained opportunity identification¡¨, ¡§establishment of networks of stakeholders¡¨ and ¡§establishment of honor¡¨. The goals of these activities are reacting to the environmental impact of high uncertainty, variance and time pressure in start-up period. Finally, according to the result of case study, this research finds ¡§sustained opportunity identification¡¨ and ¡§establishment of networks of stakeholders¡¨ could be useful or harmful to opportunity identification in different conditions. ¡§Establishment of honor¡¨ is absolutely useful to opportunity identification. So it can be understood that entrepreneurial experience could give opportunity identification a positive or negative effect.

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.

Fashion companies struggle with internationalization, as do many retailers, but nevertheless they need to take action and cross borders in order to increase their revenue. A strong focus on the entrepreneurial capabilities of a company is suggested to enhance the process and the model of internationalization as the entrepreneurial process is addressed as an established tool for internationalization. The aim of this paper is to investigate what role internationalization as an entrepreneurial process model plays in the fashion industry context. To do this, a qualitative study with five fashion companies and four trade organizations is conducted. A theoretical framework on the network internationalization process model guides the data collection consisting of several interviews with owners, CEOs and managers. The findings indicate that entrepreneurial capabilities, networks and being able to exploit contingencies play an important role for internationalization in the fashion industry. I conclude that internationalization as an entrepreneurial process can be applied in the fashion industry context.

This study focuses on how entrepreneurs learn about international business opportunities and explores the factors that affect the way they do it. The main conclusion of the literature review was that current international entrepreneurship research is still under development and the topic of international entrepreneurial learning about business opportunities yet to receive widespread attention. In addition, entrepreneurs utilise different ways to learn about the opportunities. However, there is a lack of coherence among scholars on what learning strategies are exactly, how many of them exist, and how they should be defined and categorised (Kakkonen, 2010).The research strategy of this study is based on the mixed methods approach. The design is a two-phase, sequential mixed methods study, utilising a qualitative, followed by a quantitative phase (Creswell et al., 2003). The qualitative phase was split into two parts: QUAL1 and QUAL2. Each qualitative phase includes the analysis of interviews and focus group discussions (Tashakkori and Teddlie, 1998). In the quantitative phase, a web-based questionnaire was the chosen data collection tool (Cobanoglu et al., 2001; Sills and Song, 2002). The study was conducted on a sample of 178 high-tech entrepreneurs in Israel. The results show that international entrepreneurs learn strategically about business opportunities. They utilise different ways, means, and mechanisms to assist in the identification process of entrepreneurial opportunities. These processes can be considered as learning processes, and the way they are enacted can be termed as 'learning strategies'. Based on the findings of the qualitative phases (QUAL1, QUAL2) and prior studies, six learning strategies were identified as relevant to the process of opportunity identification. Furthermore, the quantitative phase showed that business ownership experience and entrepreneurial self-efficacy have a significant influence on prior knowledge on international arena. In addition, prior knowledge was found as the most significant factor, affecting the ways entrepreneurs learn about business opportunities, while the cognitive style was found to moderate the strength of the relationships between prior knowledge and the learning strategies. Social networking ties also had an impact on the ways entrepreneurs learn, however this influence is diverse, and its statistical significance depends on the specific learning strategy. The importance and contribution of the proposed study can be defined as follows: Firstly, the study can help to reveal the underlying logic of opportunity identification as a learning process. Secondly, combining different frameworks into a new conceptual model as has been done in this study, may establish a new outlook, and contribute to the progress of research into entrepreneurship. Thirdly, International entrepreneurs can also benefit from these elements by acknowledging that they have a battery of learning strategies, which are relevant to the opportunity identification process, and most importantly, they can be taught how to learn about an idea throughout the process of opportunity identification.

Les deux dernières décennies ont été marquées par la montée en puissance des économies émergentes et l’émergence de startups et PME technologiques à forte croissance internationale. Cette tendance a donné naissance à un nouveau domaine de recherche, l’entrepreneuriat international dans les économies émergentes. L’objet de cette recherche qualitative est d’étudier les facteurs qui influencent le processus d’identification des opportunités internationales chez les PME technologiques issues d’une économie émergente, la Tunisie. A cet effet, nous étudions le processus d’internationalisation de sept PME technologiques tunisiennes du secteur des technologies de l’information et des communications. Les résultats de l’analyse intra et inter cas identifient les traits de personnalité de l’entrepreneur, les capacités entrepreneuriales internationales et les réseaux relationnels de l’entrepreneur comme les trois principales catégories de facteurs qui influencent l’identification des opportunités internationales. Notre recherche aboutit à la formulation et la discussion de huit propositions qui permettent de schématiser un modèle explicatif de l’internationalisation des PME technologiques issues des économies émergentes. / The last two decades have been marked by the rise of emerging economies and the emergence of start-ups and Hi-Tech SMEs with high international growth. This trend has spawned a new area of research, international entrepreneurship in emerging economies. The purpose of this qualitative research is to study the factors that influence the process of identifying international opportunities in technological SMEs from an emerging economy, Tunisia. To this end, we are studying the process of internationalization of seven Tunisian technological SMEs in the information and communications technology sector. The results of the intra- and inter-case analysis identify entrepreneurial personality traits, international entrepreneurial capabilities and relational networks as the three main categories of factors that influence the identification of international opportunities. Our research results in the formulation and discussion of eight proposals that make it possible to schematize an explanatory model of the internationalization of technological SMEs emerging from emerging economies.

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