This thesis studies the formation of entrepreneurial opportunity as a process. More specifically, it investigates how an illusion becomes an entrepreneurial opportunity when the entrepreneur makes effort to achieve growth in the business. The study contributes to the opportunity discussion in the entrepreneurship literature and more detailed to the opportunity related process literature.
The study was conducted as a single case study. The case is an opportunity production process and the data was gathered from a small Finnish Oulu based software firm in May 2014. The firm quickly doubled its annual turnover close to one million euros. All four owners work for the firm as entrepreneurs and two of the three major owners were interviewed.
An idea of opportunity becomes an entrepreneurial opportunity through the opportunity production process. The results indicate firstly that stakeholders, for example a customer, can be involved in the process in its early stages such as in the conceptualisation of an opportunity idea. The customer can be the primary source of an opportunity idea or an active stakeholder in the interaction in the conceptualisation phase. In the existing literature, such stakeholder as customer is not involved in the beginning of the opportunity production process.
Second suggested contribution is that entrepreneurs are simultaneously engaged in both the discover and creation types of activities during the opportunity production process. Serendipities have a role as the source of opportunity ideas in the opportunity production process. Entrepreneurs are continually involved in some kind of search endeavour and they are alert to be aware of objective opportunities. Entrepreneurs’ activities are triggered by serendipities and they may also be triggered by other kinds of activities which have origins in the opportunity discovery processes.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:oulo.fi/oai:oulu.fi:nbnfioulu-201509101970 |
| Date | 14 September 2015 |
| Creators | Tahkola, S. (Samuli) |
| Publisher | University of Oulu |
| Source Sets | University of Oulu |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/masterThesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess, © Samuli Tahkola, 2015 |
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