Purpose

Recognizing novel entrepreneurial opportunities arising from a crisis is of paramount importance for firms. Hence, understanding the pivotal factors that facilitate firms in this endeavor holds significant value. This study delves into such factors within a representative empirical context impacted by a crisis, drawing insights from existing literature on opportunity recognition during such tumultuous periods.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conducted a qualitative inspection of 14 Italian firms during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. The authors collected a rich body of multi-source qualitative data, including 34 interviews (with senior managers and entrepreneurs) and secondary data (press releases, videos, web interviews, newspapers, reports and academic articles) in two phases (March–August 2020 and September–December 2020).

Findings

The results suggest the existence of a process model of opportunity recognition during crises based on five entrepreneurial influencing factors (entrepreneurial knowledge, entrepreneurial alertness, entrepreneurial proclivity, entrepreneurial personality and entrepreneurial purpose).

Originality/value

Various scholars have highlighted that, in times of crises, it is not easy and indeed very challenging for entrepreneurs to identify novel entrepreneurial opportunities. However, recent research has shown that crises can also positively impact entrepreneurs and their capacity to identify new entrepreneurial opportunities. Given these findings, not much research has analyzed the process by which entrepreneurs identify novel entrepreneurial opportunities during crises. This study shows that some entrepreneurial influencing factors are very important to identify new entrepreneurial opportunities during crises.

中文翻译：

---

识别危机期间的创业机会：对意大利企业的定性研究

目的

认识到危机带来的新的创业机会对于企业来说至关重要。因此，了解促进企业实现这一目标的关键因素具有重要价值。本研究在受危机影响的代表性实证背景下深入探讨了这些因素，并从有关动荡时期机会识别的现有文献中汲取见解。

设计/方法论/途径

作者在 COVID-19 大流行危机期间对 14 家意大利公司进行了定性检查。作者收集了丰富的多源定性数据，包括分两个阶段（2020 年 3 月至 2020 年 8 月）的 34 次访谈（高级管理人员和企业家）和二手数据（新闻稿、视频、网络采访、报纸、报告和学术文章）以及 2020 年 9 月至 12 月）。

发现

研究结果表明，存在一个基于五个创业影响因素（创业知识、创业警觉性、创业倾向、创业个性和创业目的）的危机期间机会识别过程模型。

原创性/价值

多位学者强调，在危机时期，企业家发现新的创业机会并不容易，而且确实非常具有挑战性。然而，最近的研究表明，危机也会对企业家及其发现新创业机会的能力产生积极影响。鉴于这些发现，很少有研究分析企业家在危机期间识别新的创业机会的过程。本研究表明，一些创业影响因素对于在危机期间识别新的创业机会非常重要。