Opportunity Recognition: The Coherence of Discovery and Creation

Dean A. Shepherd () and Holger Patzelt ()
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Dean A. Shepherd: University of Notre Dame, Mendoza College of Business
Holger Patzelt: Technical University of Munich, School of Management

Chapter 2 in The Entrepreneurial Compass, 2026, pp 9-15 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This chapter details opportunity recognition as a disciplined, two-stage belief-formation process. It begins with Stage I, the development of a third-person opportunity belief (the conviction that an opportunity exists for someone), which must transition to Stage II, a first-person opportunity belief (the conviction that the opportunity is achievable for “me”). This transition is filtered through an individual’s goal orientation: a mastery orientation fosters experimentation, whereas an avoidance orientation leads to resistance to market signals. The authors employ coherence theory to explain how entrepreneurs seek to integrate new signals into a consistent view of reality, utilizing structural alignment to identify causal relationships between technologies and markets. The process is socially mediated, as a venture’s absorptive capacity and the entrepreneur’s trust in social ties filter incoming information. Ultimately, opportunities are treated as entrepreneurial conjectures tested through positive and negative strategies to establish cognitive coherence before committing resources to entrepreneurial action.

Keywords: Absorptive Capacity; Cognitive Coherence; Entrepreneurial Conjectures; Goal Orientation; Opportunity Recognition; Structural Alignment; Third-person Beliefs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-032-36429-6_2

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-36429-6_2

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