Versatile and flexible use of intellectual capital in entrepreneurial opportunity discovery

Abstract

This study examined the links between intellectual capital of entrepreneurs and the strategies they use to discover business opportunities. The findings suggest that the relationship between intellectual capital and opportunity discovery is more complicated than we have thought. The results illustrated that entrepreneurs have (1) formal knowledge to competitively scan opportunities, (2) management experience to see proactively future trends and also understanding not to lean on their managerial experience too much, when new ideas should be innovated, (3) intrinsic motivation to innovate new ideas and to proactively predict the future and (4) creativity to see gaps in competitive arenas and to proactively predict future-oriented opportunities to fill these gaps. On the basis of the results versatile and flexible use of intellectual capital is important to entrepreneurs to be able to discover opportunities for new business. Intellectual capital as such is not that important but a certain combination of them because opportunity discovery is a multiform process.