Opportunities are at the heart of entrepreneurship. Critically discuss Essay

Opportunities are at the heart of entrepreneurship. Critically discuss this statement and explain how entrepreneurial opportunities are identified - Essay Example Entrepreneurial ventures provide more jobs than large firms. In the 70s and 60s, small enterprises had a net gain, despite severe recessions, in job creation. In the US, small firms account for two thirds of jobs created in the private sector (Sahlman, 2009 p26). Interestingly, over the same period, an approximated 500 companies lost five million jobs. Small and medium enterprises provide the local population with employment. This helps promote the development of such areas as inner cities. Sponsorship of local events also helps discover new talent which when developed proves beneficial to the local economy. Entrepreneurial opportunities can be defined as situations whereby new organizational methods, markets, raw materials, services, and goods can be introduced to existent ways of business operations. The introduction is via formation of new ends, means or means-ends relationships. The situations do not require a change in economic exchange terms in order to become entrepreneurial opportunities. Rather, all they need is potential to change the economic exchange terms. Entrepreneurial decisions, unlike satisfying or optimizing decisions, are creative decisions. This means that the entrepreneur creates the ends, means, or both in the chain. The creation of these frameworks of new means-ends in entrepreneurial making of decisions marks a crucial difference in optimization of previously established frameworks. They cannot be optimized for exploitation since they are unknown. Entrepreneurial decisions involve identification or creation of new ends or means previously undetected by participa nts in the market (Audretsch, 2010 p67). This paper aims to explain the role of opportunities in the process of entrepreneurship. It also seeks to examine entrepreneurship through a framework focused on the existence and characteristics of entrepreneurial opportunities. Finally, the paper seeks to discuss