II-S3

SUMMARY

THE OPPORTUNITY RECOGNITION PROCESS AND THE PURSUIT/SUCCESS OF MULTIPLE OPPORTUNITIES

Gerald E. Hills, University of Illinois at Chicago
Rodney C. Shrader, University of Illinois at Chicago
Jurgita Baltrusaityte, University of Illinois at Chicago
Elif Izberk-Bilgin, University of Illinois at Chicago

Principal Topic

Opportunity recognition (OR) has recently become a central focus of entrepreneurship research. Furthermore, scholars have long noted that entrepreneurs often follow career corridors that lead them to become “serial entrepreneurs.” This study contributes to our understanding of both of these phenomena by examining factors that influence the pursuit and success of multiple entrepreneurial opportunities among a sample of successful entrepreneurs. We examined whether factors that have been found in other studies to influence OR are also related to the pursuit and success of multiple opportunities.

Method

Data for the study were collected by a mail survey of 187 entrepreneurs in the seven-county Chicago area. Dependent variables included: a) the number of new major business opportunities pursued in the past five years and b) the number of successful new business opportunities that were pursued. Twenty independent variables, using Likert scales, measured alertness, market sensitivity, creativity, search, market immersion, and relatedness. Hypotheses were tested with regression analysis.

Results and Implications

Although the entrepreneurs saw themselves as alert to opportunities and sensitive to markets, neither alertness nor market sensitivity were related to the pursuit or success of opportunities. Creativity was perceived to be important and was positively related to both dependent variables. The entrepreneurs had mixed opinions about the importance of opportunity search. Likewise, relationships between opportunity search and the dependent variables were mixed. Market immersion and relatedness were not viewed as important by these entrepreneurs, however, there was partial support for hypotheses regarding market immersion.

In general, these findings suggest that variables thought to influence the recognition of individual opportunities might also lead to the pursuit and success of multiple opportunities. This is important given that most previous studies have focused on examining antecedents of recognizing a single opportunity, however, research shows that many entrepreneurs tend to “serial entrepreneurs” who may follow a corridor of related opportunities. Although our findings are somewhat limited, they suggest that additional research on this topic is warranted.

CONTACT: Gerald Hills, University of Illinois at Chicago, Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies, 601 South Morgan Street, Suite 709 (MC 244), Chicago, IL 60607-7107; (T) 312-996-9130; (F) 312-413-1265; gehills@uic.edu