Are opportunities recognized or constructed? An information perspective on entrepreneurial opportunity identification

Using a case study of ten SMEs the authors apply a model of human information processing which provides a frame to help understand the entrepreneur's use of information to identify opportunities. Their model integrates an algorithmic or pattern type of information processing and a heuristic or trial and error type of information processing into a pragmatic frame of the entrepreneur's opportunity recognition-construction mechanism. This article shows how human information processing can moderate entrepreneurial opportunity identification. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.