What are Innovative Opportunities?

Abstract

To better understand and explain processes of economic transformation, this paper proposes a new concept, “innovative opportunities”. Our interpretation of opportunities is based on an understanding of innovation in a business context, stressing perception and uncertainty during the choices involved in innovation processes. Based on Schumpeterian views of economic transformation, innovative opportunities refer to a set of different elements within the processes whereby actors identify, act upon and realize new combinations of resources and market needs to try to benefit from their future economic potential. To better understand and explain such processes, the proposed conceptualization of “innovative opportunities” consists of three elements: (1) economic value; (2) mobilization of resources; and (3) appropriability, which goes beyond existing types of opportunity conceptualizations found in the literature. The concluding discussion returns to the question of how this view of innovative opportunities modifies the existing understanding of innovation activities and industrial dynamics, and helps us identify new areas of research.

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