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Where do entrepreneurial opportunities come from?

Where do entrepreneurial opportunities come from?

An opportunity is a gap in the market where there is the potential to do something different and create value (Wickham 2004). This represents a potential to serve customers better than they are already being served through a product or service that offers consumers more utility in terms of satisfying human needs than existing products or services. An opportunity must solve a problem, fulfil a need or want, create a fad or trend for any exploitation of it to have a chance of succeeding. New opportunities continually emerge but don’t necessarily present themselves openly. They must be seen, discovered and identified, which is the task of entrepreneurs and managers of firms. Not every idea is worthy enough to take action upon. The potential return on the investment of time and effort must be large enough to offset the opportunity cost of exploiting another idea or doing something else (Kirzner 1973).