A dynamic model of entrepreneurial opportunity: Integrating kirzner’s and mises’s approaches to entrepreneurial action

Abstract

We highlight the important role that time plays in conceptualizations of opportunity in entrepreneurship research. Through two longitudinal case studies, we introduce a more dynamic understanding of opportunities than portrayed by current theorizing, which tends to emphasize “opportunity discovery.” By adopting a dynamic temporal perspective, we integrate Kirzner’s and Mises’s approaches to entrepreneurial action to generate novel insights about how entrepreneurs view opportunities as initial opportunity beliefs, how these beliefs change over time, and how these changes help inform scholarly research of opportunities. We argue that taking the role of time into consideration opens up new questions related to opportunity and the dynamics of its development.