What are Innovative Opportunities?

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ABSTRACT

To better understand and explain processes of economic transformation, this paper proposes a new concept, "innovative opportunities". Our interpretation of opportunities is based on an understanding of innovation in a business context, stressing perception and uncertainty during the choices involved in innovation processes. Based on Schumpeterian views of economic transformation, innovative opportunities refer to a set of different elements within the processes whereby actors identify, act upon and realize new combinations of resources and market needs to try to benefit from their future economic potential. To better understand and explain such processes, the proposed conceptualization of "innovative opportunities" consists of three elements: (1) economic value; (2) mobilization of resources; and (3) appropriability, which goes beyond existing types of opportunity conceptualizations found in the literature. The concluding discussion returns to the question of how this view of innovative opportunities modifies the existing understanding of innovation activities and industrial dynamics, and helps us identify new areas of research.

KEY WORDS: Technological opportunities, entrepreneurial opportunities, economic value, resource mobilization, appropriability

1. Introduction

The notion of opportunities is central to understanding economic transformation, as the concept points to the core of a capitalist economy, namely, the search for profit resulting from new knowledge about resources, markets and their interrelationship. However, despite the fact that the concept of "opportunities" has been extensively used to explore different aspects of innovation, entrepreneurship and industrial dynamics, it is still vaguely and ambiguously defined. Therefore, this paper argues that our understanding of the role played by opportunities in relation to innovation needs to be improved. The rationale for this paper is that a stronger conceptualization is warranted, and thus the paper explores the question of "what are innovative opportunities?" by reviewing literature and proposing a definition and conceptual elements. Innovative opportunities as a concept should help us better understand the question of how and why actors innovate in terms of identifying, acting upon and realizing new combinations of resources and identified market needs, within a larger economic system.

Apparently there is a consensus that opportunities are somehow related to the choices that actors make in relation to innovation. However, current debate includes a variety of concepts in different literature streams. These concepts include "technological opportunities" from neo-Schumpeterian economic theory, "entrepreneurial opportunities", as...