AoM PDW: Entrepreneurial Opportunity: Oxygen or Phlogiston?

I’m really sorry I’ll be missing this. There should be more events like this one, where long-standing foundational concepts are provocatively (in a good sense) challenged:

Title: Entrepreneurial Opportunity: The Oxygen or Phlogiston of Entrepreneurship Research? (session #365)

Date & Time: Saturday, August 08, 2015, 12:30:00 PM – 3:00:00 PM

Hotel & Room: Vancouver Convention Centre, Room 012

* * * * * * * *

Entrepreneurial Opportunity: the Oxygen or Phlogiston of Entrepreneurship Research?

ABSTRACT

Reference to and debate about the notion of entrepreneurial opportunity has grown rapidly in entrepreneurship research in the last 10-15 years (Davidsson, 2015). The central role it has achieved is underlined by the fact that the concept is included in the new domain statement of the Entrepreneurship Division of AoM.

While spurring new research directions, “opportunity” is also an elusive notion. There is no agreement on the essential nature of entrepreneurial opportunities, and even those who subscribe to distinct “paradigms” or “theories” of entrepreneurial opportunities struggle with internal consistency regarding whether such entities fundamentally are individual cognitions, social constructions, or sets of objective, external conditions. Capturing “opportunities” in empirical research is also a major challenge. As a result, many central questions concerning entrepreneurial opportunities remain unanswered. So, should “entrepreneurial opportunity” remain a central building block in entrepreneurship research? Is it the oxygen that can give life and vigor to future entrepreneurship research? Or has it now become more like phlogiston; a once helpful idea that has become dated and instead threatens to stifle further progress? Are there better ways to conceptualize and empirically capture the underlying phenomena?

Continued here:

http://organizationsandmarkets.com/2015/07/07/entrepreneurial-opportunity-the-oxygen-or-phlogiston-of-entrepreneurship-research/

---