infonet-economy

Opportunity recognition takes many forms especially when it comes to information search behavior. Scholars differentiate among others between fortuitous recognition, passive search or proactive search only to name a few. Despite the importance of such information search behavior in opportunity recognition, a common understanding and a comparison of diverse information search behavior is lacking in entrepreneurship research. Furthermore, existing scales are rather imprecise with respect to information search. They only use a few dimensions or they focus on general behavior instead of information search for a specific opportunity. We develop a scale of information search behavior in opportunity recognition combining deductive and inductive approaches. Thereby we interviewed small business owner managers who recognized and successfully exploited 59 opportunities and entrepreneurship students completed the survey with the developed measurement. It resulted in five distinct factors such as problemistic, proactive, passive, systematic and slack search.