IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/sbusec/v57y2021i4d10.1007_s11187-020-00387-z.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Identifying innovative opportunities in the entrepreneurship classroom: a new approach and empirical test

Author

Listed:
  • Dan Cohen

    (Wake Forest’s Center for Entrepreneurship)

  • Dan K. Hsu

    (North Dakota State University)

  • Rachel S. Shinnar

    (Appalachian State University)

Abstract

Opportunity identification is often considered the very first step in the entrepreneurial process, and is therefore frequently included in entrepreneurship education programs. In this paper, we examine a unique teaching method (IDEATE), rooted in experiential learning and aimed at developing novice learners’ skills for opportunity identification. Using an experimental design, we compare the innovativeness of opportunities identified by undergraduate students enrolled in introductory-level entrepreneurship courses at a southeastern university. Findings show that the opportunities identified by the students in the IDEATE group were significantly more innovative than those identified by students in the passive search group. In addition, student perceptions of fit with entrepreneurship increased for the passive search training group but not for the IDEATE group. We discuss the implications for entrepreneurship education, research, and practice.

Suggested Citation

  • Dan Cohen & Dan K. Hsu & Rachel S. Shinnar, 2021. "Identifying innovative opportunities in the entrepreneurship classroom: a new approach and empirical test," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 57(4), pages 1931-1955, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:sbusec:v:57:y:2021:i:4:d:10.1007_s11187-020-00387-z
    DOI: 10.1007/s11187-020-00387-z
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11187-020-00387-z
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11187-020-00387-z?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hsu, Dan K. & Burmeister-Lamp, Katrin & Simmons, Sharon A. & Foo, Maw-Der & Hong, Michelle C. & Pipes, Jesse D., 2019. "“I know I can, but I don't fit”: Perceived fit, self-efficacy, and entrepreneurial intention," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 311-326.
    2. Peter Vogel, 2017. "From Venture Idea to Venture Opportunity," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 41(6), pages 943-971, November.
    3. Glenn W. Harrison & John A. List, 2004. "Field Experiments," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 42(4), pages 1009-1055, December.
    4. Patricia F. Kavanagh & Robert D. Hisrich, 2010. "The Relationship between the Quality of the Idea and the Strategic Potential of a New Venture: A Longitudinal Study of Five Irish Campus Companies," Managing Global Transitions, University of Primorska, Faculty of Management Koper, vol. 8(3), pages 261-284.
    5. Naomi T. Saks & Connie Marie Gaglio, 2002. "Can Opportunity Identification Be Taught?," Journal of Enterprising Culture (JEC), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 10(04), pages 313-347.
    6. Robert A. Baron & Michael D. Ensley, 2006. "Opportunity Recognition as the Detection of Meaningful Patterns: Evidence from Comparisons of Novice and Experienced Entrepreneurs," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(9), pages 1331-1344, September.
    7. Nicholas Dew & Saras D. Sarasvathy, 2016. "Editor's Choice Exaptation and niche construction: behavioral insights for an evolutionary theory," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 25(1), pages 167-179.
    8. Jason Arentz & Frederic Sautet & Virgil Storr, 2013. "Prior-knowledge and opportunity identification," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 41(2), pages 461-478, August.
    9. Norris F. Krueger Jr., 2007. "What Lies Beneath? The Experiential Essence of Entrepreneurial Thinking," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 31(1), pages 123-138, January.
    10. Justo, Rachida & DeTienne, Dawn R. & Sieger, Philipp, 2015. "Failure or voluntary exit? Reassessing the female underperformance hypothesis," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 775-792.
    11. Vaghely, Ivan P. & Julien, Pierre-André, 2010. "Are opportunities recognized or constructed?: An information perspective on entrepreneurial opportunity identification," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 73-86, January.
    12. Ghulam Nabi & Francisco Linan & Alain Fayolle & Norris F. Krueger & Andreas Walmsley, 2017. "The impact of entrepreneurship education in higher education : A systematic review and research agenda," Post-Print hal-02313409, HAL.
    13. Cardon, Melissa S. & Gregoire, Denis A. & Stevens, Christopher E. & Patel, Pankaj C., 2013. "Measuring entrepreneurial passion: Conceptual foundations and scale validation," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 373-396.
    14. Andrew C. Corbett, 2005. "Experiential Learning within the Process of Opportunity Identification and Exploitation," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 29(4), pages 473-491, July.
    15. Davidsson, Per, 2015. "Entrepreneurial opportunities and the entrepreneurship nexus: A re-conceptualization," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 674-695.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sara Sassetti & Giacomo Marzi & Vincenzo Cavaliere & Cristiano Ciappei, 2018. "Entrepreneurial cognition and socially situated approach: a systematic and bibliometric analysis," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(3), pages 1675-1718, September.
    2. Scheaf, David J. & Loignon, Andrew C. & Webb, Justin W. & Heggestad, Eric D. & Wood, Matthew S., 2020. "Measuring opportunity evaluation: Conceptual synthesis and scale development," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 35(2).
    3. Frederiks, Arjan J. & Englis, Basil G. & Ehrenhard, Michel L. & Groen, Aard J., 2019. "Entrepreneurial cognition and the quality of new venture ideas: An experimental approach to comparing future-oriented cognitive processes," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 327-347.
    4. Warnick, Benjamin J. & Kier, Alexander S. & LaFrance, Emily M. & Cuttler, Carrie, 2021. "Head in the clouds? Cannabis users' creativity in new venture ideation depends on their entrepreneurial passion and experience," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 36(2).
    5. Tim R. Holcomb & R. Duane Ireland & R. Michael Holmes Jr. & Michael A. Hitt, 2009. "Architecture of Entrepreneurial Learning: Exploring the Link among Heuristics, Knowledge, and Action," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 33(1), pages 167-192, January.
    6. Marvel, Matthew R. & Wolfe, Marcus T. & Kuratko, Donald F., 2020. "Escaping the knowledge corridor: How founder human capital and founder coachability impacts product innovation in new ventures," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 35(6).
    7. Healey, Mark P. & Bleda, Mercedes & Querbes, Adrien, 2021. "Opportunity evaluation in teams: A social cognitive model," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 36(4).
    8. Sinha, Rai Siddhant, 2022. "Baby, I'm addicted! The pleasure-pain pathway that shifts entrepreneurial passion to entrepreneurial addiction: Pivotal role of dopamine," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 18(C).
    9. Packard, Mark D. & Burnham, Thomas A., 2021. "Do we understand each other? Toward a simulated empathy theory for entrepreneurship," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 36(1).
    10. Nerine Mary George & Vinit Parida & Tom Lahti & Joakim Wincent, 2016. "A systematic literature review of entrepreneurial opportunity recognition: insights on influencing factors," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 12(2), pages 309-350, June.
    11. Tahseen Anwer Arshi & Asfia Ambrin & Venkoba Rao & Swapnil Morande & Kanwal Gul, 2022. "A Machine Learning Assisted Study Exploring Hormonal Influences on Entrepreneurial Opportunity Behaviour," Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging Economies, Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India, vol. 31(3), pages 575-602, November.
    12. Matthews, Russell S. & Chalmers, Dominic M. & Fraser, Simon S., 2018. "The intersection of entrepreneurship and selling: An interdisciplinary review, framework, and future research agenda," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 691-719.
    13. Alexander Tabares & Yanto Chandra & Claudia Alvarez & Manuela Escobar-Sierra, 2021. "Opportunity-related behaviors in international entrepreneurship research: a multilevel analysis of antecedents, processes, and outcomes," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 321-368, March.
    14. Matthew S. Wood & David W. Williams, 2014. "Opportunity Evaluation as Rule-Based Decision Making," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(4), pages 573-602, June.
    15. Othmar M. Lehner & Juha Kansikas, 2012. "Opportunity Recognition in Social Entrepreneurship," Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging Economies, Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India, vol. 21(1), pages 25-58, March.
    16. Ren, Shuang & Fan, Di & Huang, Xinli & Li, Zijie, 2021. "The micro-foundation of ambidextrous opportunity identification in international expansion," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(1).
    17. Ana Iolanda Vodă & Gina Ionela Butnaru & Rodica Cristina Butnaru, 2020. "Enablers of Entrepreneurial Activity across the European Union—An Analysis Using GEM Individual Data," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(3), pages 1-28, January.
    18. Étienne St-Jean & Maripier Tremblay & Frank Janssen & Jacques Baronet & Christophe Loué & Aziz Nafa, 2017. "May business mentors act as opportunity brokers and enablers among university students?," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 97-111, March.
    19. Abolghasem Arabiun & Niloofar Salajegheh & Zeynab Aeeni & Armin Khaleghi Forghani, 2023. "Trends and patterns in entrepreneurial action research: a bibliometric overview and research agenda," Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research, Springer;UNESCO Chair in Entrepreneurship, vol. 13(1), pages 1-17, December.
    20. Gish, J. Jeffrey & Wagner, David T. & Grégoire, Denis A. & Barnes, Christopher M., 2019. "Sleep and entrepreneurs' abilities to imagine and form initial beliefs about new venture ideas," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 34(6).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Opportunity identification; Entrepreneurship education; Experiential learning;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L26 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Entrepreneurship
    • M13 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - New Firms; Startups

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:sbusec:v:57:y:2021:i:4:d:10.1007_s11187-020-00387-z. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.