Opportunities: Happy Discovery or Act of Will?
I never expect to see an academic article or editorial that begins with a quote from an Eminem song. So when the August edition of the Academy of Management Perspectives journal kicked off a special symposium on opportunities and entrepreneurship with lyrics from “Lose Yourself,” it grabbed my attention.
“You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow/This opportunity comes once in a lifetime.”
The symposium is a collection of five articles arguing different aspects of a fundamental question for business leaders: what is the role of the leader and entrepreneur as it relates to opportunities? Are opportunities things that exist in the economic landscape waiting to be discovered by a heroic and intrepid visionary? Or are they instead created by the entrepreneur themselves with no meaningful existence apart from the person or team that brings them into being? Importantly, the issue begs the questions: does it matter? What are the implications for entrepreneurial action, leadership decision-making, and what it takes to create and sustain innovation over time?
Entrepreneurs, leaders of established firms, and academics use the term “opportunity” very differently. For the individual entrepreneur, opportunities are generally a “chance or possibility to introduce new products or services” in order to address an “unfinished yet ongoing process” in a way that fills a need, creates a new market, or adds value (Dimov, 2020, p. 334). Leaders of mature firms typically operationalize opportunities as they are used in Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunity-Threat (SWOT) analysis exercises. Any good SWOT facilitator will ensure that opportunities are closely tied to the idea of organizational threats. Specifically, both opportunities and threats are external forces or situations over which the organization has no control that can impact the firm positively (opportunity) or negatively (threat). For an academic, opportunities refer instead to “something external or antecedent if it is to have theoretical purchase” (Dimov, 2020, p. 334).
For academics and leaders of established firms, the central questions are whether an opportunity exists and whether it matters. Opportunities that matter to academics are ones that impact the set of theoretical relationships that are known to be operative in their discipline. For established leaders, the opportunities that matter are those that speak to the mission, vision, values, and business model of the firm. Opportunities are a function of “judgment and decision making, whereby the [opportunity] is an object of judgment whether by an industry analyst looking to identify all competitive imperfections… or a [leader] looking to assess a current situation in light of an aspirational goal” (Dimov, 2020, p. 335). There is a mutual perspective in both camps that opportunities exists as external realities to be discovered and either leveraged by leaders to benefit the firm or examined by academics to develop and support theories about the underlying mechanisms of success or failure.
The entrepreneur’s opportunity is an act of creation (or expression of faith) based on their belief in their ability or team, their vision, and desire to make something good happen. It is also, typically defined as “a social process that involves interactions with, consensus from, and commitments by other people” (Dimov, 2020, p. 335). At its core, the entrepreneurial perspective rejects the idea that opportunities exist apart from the lived experience of the people engaged in creating them. Entrepreneurial actions and decisions bring new things into being in collaboration with others. Taken to the extreme, this can lead to the hubristic conclusion that without the entrepreneur NOTHING would happen and that they are therefore the rainmakers and economic masters of the universe. While patently ridiculous (the sun would still rise and economic activity would still occur if the world woke up without any entrepreneurs tomorrow), this kind of entrepreneurial confidence hints at a deeper truth. The pace of change slows, and economic homogeneity increases, in the absence of entrepreneurship.
Besides an interesting lesson in semantics, what should business leaders take away from the Academy of Management Perspectives symposium on opportunities? Here are the bite-sized nuggets of wisdom that stood out for me:
Language matters: Every organization uses language differently and there is always a social aspect to the way that you talk about your business. Regardless of the vocabulary used, employees, partners, and stakeholders can see the type of thinking and decision making that gets recognized and rewarded. This social element, more so than any word choice, will be reflected in the culture of your business.
Life cycle thinking: At some point, successful companies make the transition from a scrappy young startup to an established firm. When that happens, the way that you talk about your business, how you think about and process opportunities, and the social definitions behind your language are likely to change. If you allow that to be an unconscious process, you risk losing control of the culture you want your organization to sustain.
The entrepreneurial divide: people are wired differently and tend to gravitate toward different ways of thinking about opportunities. Great leaders work hard to assemble a diversity of perspective, experience, and thought around the leadership table. Make sure you have access to all three perspectives (entrepreneurial, academic, and established leaders) actively informing your decision-making process to sustain innovation and embrace change.
The outside world exists: There is wisdom to be gained from the idea of looking for objective opportunities. Focusing too much on the next great innovation, may obscure the firm’s ability to benefit, distribute, and monetize products, services, and processes that already exist. Consider this, the inventor or innovator often fails to reap the economic benefits of their invention. Rather, those that see the potential and are able to bring advances to market are the ones that ultimately use the innovation to benefit themselves and others. Do not let the lure of innovation distract you from leveraging the opportunities already in front of you to build a significant and sustainable business.
Getting out of your own head and leveraging another point of view is not easy, but we can help.
Let’s get to work!
