Opportunity Identification and Pursuit: Does an Entrepreneur’s Human Capital Matter?

By Deniz Ucbasaran, Paul Westhead, Mike Wright. 2008

774 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Extending human capital approaches to entrepreneurship, an entrepreneur’s “inputs” relating to their general (i.e. education and work experience) and entrepreneurship-specific human capital profile (i.e. business ownership experience, managerial capabilities, entrepreneurial capabilities and technical capabilities) are presumed to be related to entrepreneurial “outputs” in the form of business opportunity identification and pursuit. Valid and reliable independent variables were gathered from a stratified random sample of 588 owners of private firms. Ordered logit analysis was used to test several theoretically derived hypotheses. With regard to the number of business opportunities identified and pursued, entrepreneurship-specific rather than general human capital variables “explained” more of the variance. Entrepreneurs reporting higher information search intensity identified significantly more business opportunities, but they did not pursue markedly more or less opportunities. The use of publications as a source of information was positively associated with the probability of identifying more opportunities, while information emanating from personal, professional and business networks was not. Implications for practitioners and researchers are discussed.

Subfields: Management of Technology and Innovation, Sociology and Political Science, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6c1935d14ffc6a53a3897983c495bcf83bf33f78

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Citations in the corpus

Private Firms and Corporate Governance: An Integrated Economic and Management Perspective (2007, background): “For example, to what extent do habitual entrepreneurs make greater or less use of formal governance mechanisms? Habitual entrepreneurs may develop their human capital in terms of opportunity identification and pursuit ( Ucbasaran et al., 2006, 2007 ), and in relation to their expertise in dealing wi”
What matters, matters differently: a conjoint analysis of the decision policies of angel and venture capital investors (2014, background): “General human capital (e.g., education) and specific human capital (experience or training specific to the task) (Becker 1975) are important in the entrepreneurial process (Dimov 2010; Ucbasaran, Westhead, and Wright 2008; Unger et al. 2011).”
Capturing value from alliance portfolio diversity: The mediating role of R&D human capital in high and low tech industries (2017, background): “…human capital; general human capital relates to knowledge and skills that are easily transferable across jobs, firms and industries, whereas specific human capital refers to knowledge and skills that can be used within the context of a specific job or a specific firm (Ucbasaran et al., 2008).”
Nascent Entrepreneurs and Venture Emergence: Opportunity Confidence, Human Capital, and Early Planning (2010, background): “…creation activities, are more proximate and instrumental predictors of various new venture milestones such as opportunity recognition (Corbett, 2007; Ucbasaran et al., 2008), progress through the start-up process (Bruderl et al., 1992; Davidsson and Honig, 2003), and survival (Bosma et al., 2004).”
Antecedents of Business Opportunity Identification and Innovation: Investigating the Interplay of Information Processing and Information Acquisition (2014, methodology): “While both factors have been examined independently of each other (e.g., Davidsson & Honig, 2003; DeTienne & Chandler, 2004; Ucbasaran et al., 2008), an examination of joint effects of information acquisition and processing is lacking in the entrepreneurship literature.”
Prior knowledge and social networks in the exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities (2010, background): “So, the factors affecting the identification of opportunities have received more attention (Ardichvili et al. 2003; Baron and Ensley 2006; Casson and Wadeson 2007; Gordon 2007; Ozgen and Baron 2007; Park 2005; Puhakka 2007; Singh et al. 1999; Shepherd and DeTienne 2005; Smith et al. 2009; Ucbasaran ”
Export propensity, export intensity and firm performance: The role of the entrepreneurial founding team (2012, background): “…and proven in a number of studies to be among the main determinants of strategic choice, opportunity identification and of a variety of performance measures throughout a firm’s life (Cooper, 1981; Roper, 1998; Westhead et al , 2001; Colombo and Grilli, 2005; Casson, 2005; Ucbasaran et al, 2008).”
Creativity in the opportunity identification process and the moderating effect of diversity of information (2012, background): “The positive relationship between the generation of original business ideas and venture growth is line with research suggesting that the originality of business ideas is an important indicator for the financial potential of business ideas (Fiet, 2002; Shepherd & DeTienne, 2005; Ucbasaran et al., 200”
Serendipity in Entrepreneurship (2009, background): “Studies of habitual entrepreneurs have added the insight that much of the specific knowledge accumulated by entrepreneurs occurs in the course of their prior entrepreneurial experiences (Ucbasaran et al. 2008).”
The impact of human capital on the early success of necessity versus opportunity-based entrepreneurs (2014, background): “Better educated entrepreneurs may also have better social networks, as a result of their longer stay in the education system, and that may be useful for the development of their businesses (Ucbasaran et al., 2008).”
Serial entrepreneurship: impact of human capital on time to re-entry (2011, background): “…individuals with specific knowledge of business dynamics (e.g., knowledge about customers, suppliers, products and services), as well as business opportunities identification and the process of entering and running a firm (Bates 1990; Gimeno et al. 1997; Bosma et al. 2004; Ucbasaran et al. 2008).”