Observing Entrepreneurial Opportunity in Entanglement

This paper advances a unified theoretical framework that synthesises Shane and Eckhardt’s individual–opportunity nexus, Ramoglou and Tsang’s opportunities-as-propensities perspective, and Davidsson’s tripartite model of new venture ideas, external enablers, and opportunity confidence. Building on these foundations, the paper develops an entrepreneurial entanglement model that explains how opportunities emerge as probabilistic propensities within dynamic configurations of agents, artefacts, distributed agencies, and spatiotemporal conditions. The model clarifies how material artefacts, socio-cognitive processes, and environmental shifts jointly shape the emergence, visibility, and realisation of entrepreneurial possibilities. By situating opportunity formation within an entangled field—rather than within isolated acts of discovery or creation—the framework deepens understanding of how entrepreneurial actions give rise to potentialities and how these potentialities become actualised under conditions of uncertainty. The analysis contributes to both theory and practice by offering a relational, mechanism-based account of how entrepreneurial behaviour and environmental factors intersect to structure the formation and realisation of opportunities.