Skip to main content
Search

Entrepreneurial opportunities

Published on June 11, 2012 Reviewed on January 30, 2020   47 min

A selection of talks on Management, Leadership & Organisation

Please wait while the transcript is being prepared...
0:00
Greetings. My name is Jon Eckhardt. I'm a Professor at the Weinert Center for Entrepreneurship at the Wisconsin School of Business. I've been giving talks on entrepreneurship at leading business schools around the world and research groups, as well as national and international conferences. The title of our talk today is entrepreneurial opportunities, their origins, forms, and suitability for new ventures. I'll first provide a brief outline of where we're headed in our discussion today. Then we'll dive into the topic of entrepreneurial opportunities.
0:29
We'll first start with some basic terminology. Next, we'll dive into the question of, why opportunities? Why should an entrepreneur think about opportunities when they are considering pursuing an act of entrepreneurship? Next, we will talk about sources of opportunities. Where do opportunities come from? Then we will talk about the different forms or types of opportunities. Then we'll talk about what makes an opportunity good, and we'll have a special focus here on what makes an opportunity more or less suitable for being organized through the creation of a new venture.
0:60
We'll first start with the definition of entrepreneurship, and we'll define it as a pursuit of opportunity without regard to the resources you currently control. Two things to highlight here. First is the pursuit of some idea without concern to the resources that an individual can control. These resources include education or the ability to understand certain technological fields, as well as financial capital and organizational capital, meaning an organization might have to pursue a particular idea. Second thing to highlight here, is opportunity itself. That's central that entrepreneurship is this notion or concept of an opportunity which we'll be defining. Next definition here is an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur is defined as individual or a firm that engages in some aspect of the entrepreneurial process, or it's somebody that is involved somehow in pursuing and organizing an opportunity. Entrepreneurship or the entrepreneur relies on two things. First, a skill set, meaning they have, they use a particular set of skills to effectively organize opportunities. Secondarily, a mindset, meaning they have a certain way of thinking about the world including opportunities, that's somewhat different than individuals who are not engaged in an act of entrepreneurship.