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A historical intervention in the “opportunity wars”: forgotten scholarship, the discovery/creation disruption, and moving forward by looking backward

A historical intervention in the “opportunity wars”: forgotten scholarship, the discovery/creation disruption, and moving forward by looking backward
A historical intervention in the “opportunity wars”: forgotten scholarship, the discovery/creation disruption, and moving forward by looking backward

There are two battles at the heart of the “opportunity wars”: (1) Are opportunities discovered or created, and (2) Should we perhaps abandon the opportunity concept altogether? We argue that the first question is a pseudo-question, made possible by the loose use of “opportunity” in the discovery/creation debate during the last two decades. However, we refrain from going so far as to conclude that the opportunity concept should be abandoned altogether, since we observe that strategy and entrepreneurship scholarship prior to the 2000s made a more meaningful use of the concept. It alluded to the environmental conditions necessary for the actualization of desirable futures and hardly ever questioned the agent-independence of such conditions. Accordingly, we maintain that the opportunity concept should simply exit the blind alley created by the “discovery/creation” distraction and help reorient attention toward the agent-independent sources of opportunity and threat—beyond unrealistically optimistic views of entrepreneurship as an act of “opportunity discovery” and/or “opportunity creation.”.

agency/structure, entrepreneurial metatheory, history, opportunities, positive thinking ideology, possibilism, strategic management, threats
1042-2587
1521-1538
Ramoglou, Stratos
f3fffbf5-0f1f-46e1-93af-a13e18945610
Gartner, William B.
97fe48fc-3c62-40d2-b4be-377fa96b00ac
Ramoglou, Stratos
f3fffbf5-0f1f-46e1-93af-a13e18945610
Gartner, William B.
97fe48fc-3c62-40d2-b4be-377fa96b00ac

Ramoglou, Stratos and Gartner, William B. (2023) A historical intervention in the “opportunity wars”: forgotten scholarship, the discovery/creation disruption, and moving forward by looking backward. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 47 (4), 1521-1538. (doi:10.1177/10422587211069310).

Record type: Article

Abstract

There are two battles at the heart of the “opportunity wars”: (1) Are opportunities discovered or created, and (2) Should we perhaps abandon the opportunity concept altogether? We argue that the first question is a pseudo-question, made possible by the loose use of “opportunity” in the discovery/creation debate during the last two decades. However, we refrain from going so far as to conclude that the opportunity concept should be abandoned altogether, since we observe that strategy and entrepreneurship scholarship prior to the 2000s made a more meaningful use of the concept. It alluded to the environmental conditions necessary for the actualization of desirable futures and hardly ever questioned the agent-independence of such conditions. Accordingly, we maintain that the opportunity concept should simply exit the blind alley created by the “discovery/creation” distraction and help reorient attention toward the agent-independent sources of opportunity and threat—beyond unrealistically optimistic views of entrepreneurship as an act of “opportunity discovery” and/or “opportunity creation.”.

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More information

Accepted/In Press date: 25 November 2021
e-pub ahead of print date: 3 March 2022
Published date: July 2023
Keywords: agency/structure, entrepreneurial metatheory, history, opportunities, positive thinking ideology, possibilism, strategic management, threats

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 452302
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/452302
ISSN: 1042-2587
PURE UUID: 32b85a85-4658-4195-9c74-b057e8f4a940
ORCID for Stratos Ramoglou: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-5134-5525

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Date deposited: 06 Dec 2021 17:34
Last modified: 16 Jul 2024 01:45

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Author: William B. Gartner

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