More on Opportunity Discovery and Entrepreneurial Judgment
26 February 2008 at 10:49 am Nicolai Foss 2 comments
| Nicolai Foss |
Peter and I (well, mostly Peter) have often contrasted the Knightian notion of entrepreneurial judgment with other notions of entrepreneurship, mainly Kirzner’s concept of alertness (here). In “Entrepreneurship: From Opportunity Discovery to Judgment” (download from this page), we provide what is no doubt the definitive statement on the issue. The paper is a draft of chapter 2 in our forthcoming book, Entrepreneurial Judgment and the Theory of the Firm, and constructive criticism is most appreciated. Here is the abstract:
Entrepreneurship has become a fast-growing subfield in management research, and is increasingly appearing in economics, finance, and even law. We survey a number of approaches to entrepreneurship in the economics and management literatures, and argue that modern research in this area need to be focused around ideas from Austrian economics and Frank Knight on entrepreneurial judgment. We critically discuss the recent opportunity discovery literature in management, and argue that it has partially misunderstood the Austrian origins of the theory, and fails to adequately distinguish between opportunity identification and opportunity exploitation.
UPDATE: You can also download the paper from SSRN.
Entry filed under: - Foss -, Austrian Economics, Entrepreneurship.
Organizations and Markets 
1.
Warren Miller | 26 February 2008 at 12:28 pm
Maybe I’m missing something here, Nicolai, but that link to Kirzner’s “concept of alertness” just brings me back to this page and related posts. Maybe that’s what it’s supposed to do, but I thought I’d note it, just in case.
While I’m here, thanks to you and Peter for this great blog. I think O&M is far and away the best on the Net. Please keep up the great work!
2.
Peter Klein | 26 February 2008 at 12:38 pm
Warren, thanks for the very kind words. We certainly think we have the best readers and commentators on the Net.
Actually Nicolai’s link takes you to a search results page, but the present post appears at the top of the page, making things a little confusing. After hitting the link scroll down and you’ll find more posts with “alertness” and “judgment” as key words.