Do great technological ideas make great

business opportunities?
Entrepreneurs self-regulatory focus in
opportunity building
Ferran Giones
1
, Francesc Miralles
1

1
La Salle Ramon Llull University, Llucanes 43, 08022 Barcelona, Spain,
{fgiones,fmiralles}@salleurl.edu
Abstract:
How do technology-based entrepreneurs transform technological ideas into business opportunities? We explore how
individuals self-regulatory focus and institutional forces influence in the opportunity construction process. This
research addresses the apparent paradox between the exploration efforts of the entrepreneur to find a use for the
technological idea, with the institutional pressure advance to opportunity exploitation. We use an inductive multiple-
case study with a sample of three technology-based entrepreneurs to shed some light on the phenomena. The results
suggest that there is a two-stage process in the transformation of an idea into an opportunity; entrepreneurs ability to
moderate their self-regulatory focus is seen to play an important role in this process. These findings hold several
implications for entrepreneurs and stakeholders interested in promoting technology-based entrepreneurship.
Keywords
Technology-based entrepreneurship, self-regulatory theory, entrepreneurial opportunity
1 Introduction
Researchers have identified the positive impact of technology-based entrepreneurship as a source
of social and economic renewal [Beckman et al., 2012]. Policy makers looking for new sources
of growth and development have been interested in getting a closer understanding on how to
promote such type of entrepreneurship [Lerner, 2010].
We know that technology-based entrepreneurship is rather complex; entrepreneurs cope with
the usual challenges of entrepreneurship processes, plus the ones related with technological
innovation [Hsu, 2008]. Prior research on the origin of opportunities proposes two paths for
opportunity identification, describing the discovery vs. creation view [see Alvarez & Barney,
2007], where the discovery view is seen to provide support to understand the opportunity
identification processes in environments measured by risk, and the creation view favors the
description of the opportunity identification in rich uncertainty environments, were business
opportunities have a subjective nature till they fully emerge [Wood & McKinley, 2010].
Prior studies on the interplay between the entrepreneur, the opportunity and the context in
technology based-entrepreneurship have observed that self-regulatory theory would help to
explain how entrepreneurs lead the emergence process of opportunities. Those individuals
observed to hold a self-regulatory promotion focus, driven by growth and attracted to exploration
activities, would be more likely to complete the opportunity development [Hmieleski & Baron,
2008]. However, prior studies on entrepreneurial behavior also observed that institutional
pressures favor the adoption of a self-regulatory prevention focus, constraining the opportunity
exploration and favoring the adoption of risk mitigation strategies [Karlsson & Honig, 2009].
Therefore, it remains unclear whether the successful transformation of technological ideas into
business opportunities could be fully attributed to the individuals self-regulatory promotion
focus, or whether we should also rely on the context institutional pressures to describe how ideas
are transformed into opportunities.
This research follows a multiple-case study to explore how three entrepreneurs transform their
technological idea into a business opportunity, adopting the lenses of the self-regulatory theory
to describe the entrepreneur's behavior. The cases were selected to include different technologies
and entrepreneur's profile as potential sources variability, while controlling that all of them were
subject to similar institutional pressures as they received support from the same innovation park.
The results show that as hypothesized, the self-regulatory promotion focus favors the early stages
of opportunity exploration, but that as entrepreneurs get closer the "business opportunity"
development a shift in their behavior occurs. A description and discussion of the results is
presented.
2 Literature Review
The discussion on how objective are opportunities has produced an intense debate [Alvarez &
Barney, 2007, Klein, 2008, Zahra, 2008]. Proponents of opportunities as objective realities
waiting to be discovered would be challenged by alternative views that suggest that actually
entrepreneurs create opportunities that remain subjective till they are validated in the market
[Alvarez & Barney, 2007]. In an attempt to untangle the discussion, it has been proposed to
differentiate between ideas and business opportunities [Shane, 2012].
What is different between a technological idea and a business opportunity? Ideas are described as
still in the subjective, imaginative terrain [Klein, 2008], thus difficult to share with a third person
[see Shepherd et al., 2007]. Meanwhile, a business opportunity is described as a complete
conceptualization of the product or service including the target market; putting it in short, it
combines the identification of the problems and solutions [Ardichvili et al., 2003].
In stable and mature industrial environments, the discussion regarding how different is the
opportunity from the initial idea of the entrepreneur might not be very relevant, instead,
researchers have studied how entrepreneurs would successfully gain access to the needed
resources to exploit the opportunity they had at hand [Davidsson & Honig, 2003]. But, in
dynamic and fast-changing technological environments, the initial idea might be very different
from the final opportunity that the technology-based entrepreneur exploits [Teece, 2010], and it
rarely is the product of a single, individual insight [Dimov, 2007a].
Scholars have suggested that in contexts with limited information and high dynamism, we should
focus on studying the entrepreneurs actions to understand the entrepreneurship process
outcomes [McMullen & Shepherd, 2006]. The evolutionary and social construction views have
promoted the understanding of entrepreneurial opportunities as emergent realities [Wood &
McKinley, 2010]. Such perspectives propose that entrepreneurial action starts with vague ideas,
before the opportunity is an objective reality, and that entrepreneurs actions, in a rather
undefined context, promotes the transformation of the idea into a business opportunity.
2.1 Technology entrepreneurship as a specific case:
Technology-based entrepreneurship is identified as a driver of economic renewal, productivity
improvement and social welfare in our society [Beckman et al., 2012]. The discussion on the
nature of opportunities and their origin, has offered an opportunity to review what we know on
the early stages of technology-based entrepreneurship.
Technology-based entrepreneurs deal with a dual source of complexity, as they have to cope
with technological innovation and entrepreneurship challenges [Hsu, 2008]. Extant prior research
on technology-entrepreneurship has contributed to understand the influence of priori resources,
such as social capital and industry knowledge to explain the differences in new venture success
[Gans & Stern, 2003, Carmeli & Azeroual, 2009], as well as to explain how pre-existent
networks would influence in entrepreneurs ability to successfully exploit technological ideas
[Shane & Cable, 2002, Brinckmann & Hoegl, 2011]. Nevertheless, little attention has been given
to how the opportunity emerged and how the entrepreneur managed to transform the subjective
idea into a sound opportunity [Klein, 2008, Shane, 2012].
This literature gap has become relevant as we aim to find answers to why some entrepreneurs
with scarce resources are able to successfully bring to market their ideas, while others with the
expected mix of resources and network structure are unable to fulfill the market expectations
[Priem et al., 2011]. Such gap is particularly relevant as most entrepreneurial policies are seen to
adopt the dominant discovery logic, creating institutional pressures to promote an opportunity
exploitation orientation [Karlsson & Honig, 2009], regardless of the often unsatisfactory socio-
economic outcomes [Shane, 2009].
2.2 Entrepreneurial action in technology-based contexts: a social construction
Prior research exploring entrepreneurial actions in uncertain and dynamic technology contexts,
describes that entrepreneurs often make decisions without complete information, having to rely
on weak market indicators adopting sensemaking like strategies [see Weick et al., 2005].
Furthermore, scholars coined the effectuation view [Sarasvathy, 2001, Dew et al., 2010] to
explain how despite the limited capability to predict the technological and market development,
entrepreneurs would engage in sustained preliminary market actions with the expectation to
gather further information on their entrepreneurial opportunity.
The social construction perspective of opportunity development [Wood & McKinley, 2010]
proposes that under uncertainty, entrepreneurs interactions with their environment accelerate the
processes related to the opportunity conceptualization and assessment of its viability. These
interactions foster entrepreneurs confidence in the opportunity [Dimov, 2007b], plus they collect
feedback from trusted peers and exchange knowledge on the exploration options for their idea
[Wood & McKinley, 2010]. In addition, it has also been argued that those interactions result in
legitimacy gains that could propel the opportunity development [Tornikoski, 2009] as
stakeholder also modify their perception on the technological ideas potential and feasibility.
Raising legitimacy and reducing doubts in the opportunity are key elements in technology-based
entrepreneurship, as it often requires generous funding months ahead of their first revenue
streams and product commercialization [Hsu, 2007].
But, beyond the insight that action benefits the opportunity construction, there is little known on
how individuals cope with the information exchanged in the interactions with the potential
market and stakeholders, and how the process of opportunity construction advances or is
abandoned [Wood & McKinley, 2010]. Therefore, there is interest in exploring the influence of
the individual cognition biases on the adoption of decision-making mechanisms and action paths
[Baron, 2007].
2.3 Self-regulatory focus and opportunity building in technology-based
entrepreneurship
Research on the cognitive processes, using the self-regulatory theory [see Kuhl, 1992], has
suggested that entrepreneurs differ in their self-regulation mechanisms, describing how some
individuals would tend to focus in minimizing losses or avoid setbacks and stick to the initial
plan, describing a prevention focus; while others would be motivated by new achievements and
growth, describing a promotion focus. The application of self-regulatory theory in
entrepreneurship has been used to explain how a close fit between the entrepreneur observed
self-regulatory focus and the context dynamism would positively influence the successful
development of the entrepreneurial opportunity [Baron, 2007, Hmieleski & Baron, 2008,
Nambisan & Baron, 2012]. Prior research has found support for the hypothesis that in
technology-based contexts, with high uncertainty, entrepreneurs decision-making mechanisms
that fit with a promotion focus would result in superior new venture performance [Hmieleski &
Baron, 2008].
Thus, we propose to study how technology-based entrepreneurs navigate through the
transformation of ideas into opportunities, exploring whether the self-regulatory focus fit with
the context dynamism favors or makes more difficult the opportunity definition process. We aim
to shed some additional light observing how entrepreneurs deal with the technology uncertainty
and dynamism and at the same time attempt to comply with the institutional pressures.
3 Method and Data
This research has an explorative objective, thus we propose a research design that uses an
inductive multiple-case study [Yin, 2003] to study different cases of technology-based
entrepreneurs as they transform their initial idea into a business opportunity. Case studies
provide with rich information on the phenomenon of study, offering the possibility to combine
the perceptions of the entrepreneur with observable data [Yin, 2003]. This research embeds three
units of analysis: the entrepreneur, the opportunity and the context.
3.1 Sample
To explore how entrepreneurs would transform their ideas into opportunities, we selected three
technology-based entrepreneurs (Bestv, Miraveo and Securiforest) that had started their projects
with the support of the same technology innovation park. The sample is designed to include
different profiles of technology-based entrepreneurs: a serial entrepreneur, a university professor
and an experienced manager; all of them with advanced technological knowledge but with
different levels of experience in relation to prior entrepreneurial exposure (see Table 1). In
addition, we restricted the theoretical sampling to one context (the same innovation park) to
ensure that across the three cases, the type of institutional pressures would be as similar as
possible. Thus, we aimed to capture variability in the entrepreneurial decision-making profiles
and types of technological ideas, meanwhile keeping one type of variability related to contextual
elements.
Therefore, consistent with the focus of the research, the theoretical sampling was built with the
expectation to study three different cases of technological idea to business opportunity
transformation. As we would rely mostly in entrepreneurs ability to recall the actions and
motivations, we limited the sample to relatively young entrepreneurial projects, only selecting
the cases in where the entrepreneur had started the project less than three years ago from the
moment when the data collection process started. With this control we also expected to reduce
potential self-reporting biases.
Entrepreneur
Profile\Name
Bestv Miraveo Securiforest
Founder Education
& Background
Graduate in Political
Science and MBA -
Serial entrepreneur
Graduate and PhD
Computer Science -
University Associate
Professor
Graduate and MBA in
Business Administration -
Executive Manager
Entrepreneurial
experience
Experience entrepreneur
with prior projects with
technology products
No prior experience Experience in new product
development but not in
startups
Technological idea Digital television
broadcasting architecture
Communication
protocol for wireless
networks
Virtual multiplatform
operating system
Business
Opportunity
Offer on demand rich data
services to broadcasters
using their existing
infrastructure
Offer spontaneous
communication
networks to mobile
communities with no
need for equipment
installation
Offer software testing on
multiple environments to
IT teams in large
corporations
Table 1: Sample of Technology-based Entrepreneurs
3.2 Data collection
The primary source of data for the research has been gathered through direct one-to-one
interviews with the entrepreneurs that lead the process of opportunity development. The data was
collected between March 2009 and June 2010. Secondary sources of information regarding the
entrepreneur profile, their technological idea and their business opportunity were collected using
public available data and documents produced in their interactions with the innovation park.
The semi-structured interviews that lasted between 45 and 90 minutes, started with a description
of the initial technological idea and the motivation that the entrepreneur had to start exploring
its potential. From this point, following the chronological sequence of events, we captured a
description of the actions and events that lead to the business opportunity emergence. To
ensure that we were collecting comparable data, we identified the moment of emergence of the
business opportunity when the entrepreneur had been able to define the problem and solution
and gain some market feedback on its potential.
Overall, we relied on the entrepreneurs self-description of actions and past behavior as a proxy
for an objective, measurable, longitudinal observation of their actions; similar approaches have
been followed by other researchers exploring entrepreneurial behavior [see Fisher, 2012].
Individual case stories were built to gain insights on the fit between the self-regulatory focus of
the entrepreneur and the changes in their environment and context of the opportunity emergence.
We had regular iterations between the data and the literature to assess what would constitute a
contribution and what could be better explained with existent theory and literature. This process
of rich interaction between data and theory required of an extended of analysis that produced the
results that are exposed in the following parts of the article.
4 Results
Our data suggests that transforming great technological ideas into great business opportunities is
a rather complex process; highly dependent on the entrepreneur's ability to cope with uncertainty
and make choices among a high number of available options. This transformation process
includes processing different sources of feedback, exploring new markets and industrial contexts
in search for an application, and even modifying the technological idea.
In the three cases studied: Bestv, Miraveo and Securiforest; we observed how the technological
ideas alone were of little value unless the entrepreneur engaged in a process of iteration and
social interaction to refine and develop the initial idea. Consistently with prior research on
technology-based entrepreneurship [see Hmieleski & Baron, 2008], we found evidence to
support that entrepreneur's self-regulatory promotion focus would favor the opportunity
construction process.
Nevertheless, the data suggests that as entrepreneurs get closer to a potential business
opportunity, mechanisms to mitigate and adjust the promotion focus are adopted. As described in
Table 2, meanwhile in the central stage of transformation of the idea we observed a dominance
of the promotion focus, in the latter stages of opportunity conceptualization we observed
important differences in the entrepreneurial behavior of each of the cases studied. Thus, we
propose to describe exploring these two different stages, separating the initial transformation
from the business opportunity development.
Description of the
idea to opportunity
evolution
Bestv Miraveo Securiforest
Technology idea
situation
Technological idea
emerged from prior
industrial research
developments
Potential application
of a scientific
research outcome to
the industrial context
Existent technology
transferred to another
context
Initial
transformation
process
Promotion focus
Oriented exploration
no major changes of
search path
Promotion focus
Pivoting around the
central technological
idea
Promotion focus
Different paths explored
in parallel to find the
business opportunity
Business
opportunity
development
Prevention focus
dealing with investors
pressure and
consolidation of the
market opportunity
Promotion focus is
moderated in search
of additional
opportunities
Promotion focus is
moderated - selected
new technologies and
new opportunities
Degree of change in
the industry/market
Stayed in the initial
market of the
technological idea
Moved sequentially
exploring different
markets
Explored different
markets in parallel
Table 2: Description of idea to opportunity evolution and entrepreneurs self-regulatory focus
4.1 Initial transformation process: promotion focus dominates:
In this early stage, the entrepreneur would be seen to have to deal with search for an application
"I started looking for potential applications for the communication system I was developing"
Miraveo. Often this process is seen to start regardless of the high uncertainty perception, and the
perceived difficulties to get market information "we did not know in which industry we should
target" Miraveo. In this process, individuals with a self-regulatory promotion focus would strive
to advance and creatively search for potential applications, accepting to even change the nature
of their technological idea: "the product has suffered multiple variations and adaptations" Bestv.
The data also shows that entrepreneurs would benefit from industry knowledge and professional
background [see Shane, 2000] in this exploration activity: "my prior experience gave me insights
on the problems customers have, what they are worried about" Securiforest . As well as from
rich social construction [see Wood & McKinley, 2010] strategies "as we spoke to people, we
have started to understand how could the technology be used" Miraveo. Such behavior would
favor to explore beyond the initial context or industry where the technological idea started.
Interestingly, in all three cases the entrepreneur's behavior would fit well with a promotion focus,
but there were differences in how they would explore the opportunities, showing in some cases
sequential trial/error approaches [see Vaghely & Julien, 2010], while in others it described a
parallel exploration of a portfolio of opportunities. This is consistent with observations on how
different stocks of human and social capital would influence the exploration paths of
entrepreneurs [Wiklund & Shepherd, 2008].
4.2 Business opportunity development: morphing or covering up:
As the entrepreneurs would get closer to conceptualizing a real "business opportunity" changes
in their description of entrepreneurial behavior were observed. Although in the initial steps of the
technological idea transformation we had not seen strong influences from external forces. It is in
this later stage of the opportunity development that the institutional pressures were seen to take
an important role.
First, there was the change in perception that the context had changed: "for the venture to survive
we needed to achieve clear goals" Securiforest; or in other words: "as you advance, you look
more carefully at potential opportunities" Bestv. Second, this change was also influenced by new
external forces: "investors want to see the opportunity to mitigate risk" Securiforest; even
producing a whole change in the described action path of the entrepreneur "we needed to identify
all the potential sources of risk" Bestv. Finally, as the technological idea transformation was
closer to a business opportunity and entrepreneurs started approaching investors through the
innovation park, the priorities of the entrepreneur would change: "our major challenge was to
explain to investors in a clear way why our technological product was relevant" Bestv.
Surprisingly, the experience of the institutional pressures, could actually seem to modify the self-
regulatory focus of the entrepreneur, morphing its actions and decision-making mechanisms, as
seen in "if before I would make opportunistic decision, now I take my time to study the financial
return" Bestv.
Therefore, although in the initial stages, our data shows that self-regulatory promotion focus
explains well the successful development of the "technological idea", as the entrepreneur is seen
to get closer to the "business opportunity" there is moderation or even morphing of the regulatory
focus in what could be described as an attempt to gain fit with the new context.
5 Discussion and conclusion
This research findings enrich the existent research on self-regulatory theory [Kuhl, 1992] in the
entrepreneurship field [Hmieleski & Baron, 2008, Nambisan & Baron, 2012] by extending its
use to explain the early stages of opportunity development in technology-based entrepreneurship.
The described results are consistent with prior findings on the observed advantages of self-
regulatory promotion focus in exploration activities such as searching for a technology idea
application or market [Hmieleski & Baron, 2008]. Nevertheless the results also point towards the
suggestion that the promotion focus often is moderated as the entrepreneur gets closer to the
"business opportunity". This could also be explained by a learning process that helps the
entrepreneur to realize when it needs to deal with institutional pressures and morph its self-
regulatory focus to fit with the opportunity stage and the context, a similar explanation is used to
explain the differential traits of successful serial entrepreneurs [see Westhead et al., 2005]. Such
findings have interesting parallelisms with knowledge creation in new product development
projects [see Schulze & Hoegl, 2006]suggesting and interesting avenue for future research.
As a result, we did not observe the expected negative influence of the institutional pressures as a
potential constrain to entrepreneurs development of exploration activities [see Karlsson & Honig,
2009]. Instead, we observed that entrepreneurs had the ability to adjust their self-regulatory
focus, as part of their cognitive ability to learn and adapt as the "technological idea" evolved into
a "business opportunity" [Haynie et al., 2010]
5.1 Limitations:
This research is not absent of limitations, we mostly relied on entrepreneur's perceptions and
self-representation to build the cases and stories behind their business opportunities. Thus, our
interpretation of the actions and motivations has heavily relied on the entrepreneurs ability to
recall the actions and events that happened in a given period of time. A longitudinal study could
provide more detail on how each interaction with stakeholders and the context influenced the
action logic of the entrepreneur, studying both the changes in orientation and in
conceptualization of the opportunity.
Further research would greatly benefit from extending the sample of observation as well as
adopting objective measures, such as questionnaires [as in Higgins, 2002], besides relying on the
entrepreneur's representation of the events and context. Such approach would also open the
possibility of testing some of the assumptions using Social Network Analysis and gain further
understanding on how network centrality and other measures add information to the description
of the idea to opportunity transformation.
Last, future research efforts would be strengthened if additional industries and sources of
variability were included to assess the contingency of the current findings [Welter, 2011].
5.2 Conclusions
In this article, we have studied the opportunity building process in technology-based
entrepreneurship through the lenses of self-regulatory theory. We have found that promotion
focus is related with the development of the initial exploration activities to find an application or
market for the technological idea, but that as entrepreneurs get close to the complete "business
opportunity" development the institutional forces modify the self-regulatory focus.
These findings are a small step towards getting a greater understanding on how the entrepreneur,
the opportunity and the context interplay in the stages prior to opportunity exploitation. We
attempt to contribute to both, an extended use of the self-regulatory theory as well as to the open
call for further contextualization of entrepreneurship theories.
We hope that entrepreneurs, policy makers and stakeholders find insights on how to adjust
technology-based entrepreneurship support mechanisms to foster the successful transformation
of great technological ideas into great business opportunities.
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