What is an Entrepreneurial Opportunity?

What an entrepreneurial opportunity is and from whence it comes are important issues for understanding how markets function and come into being. In addition to describing the forum held on the topic and summarizing the contributions of the articles that appear in the special issue, this article shares a number of lessons learned during the conference and the editorial process. We explore three of the most important reasons for confusion about the opportunity construct: (1) the “objectivity†of opportunity, (2) the perceived importance of one particular individual in determining the direction of the social world and (3) what distinguishes the sub-class of “entrepreneurial†opportunity from the broader category of opportunity in general. Finally, we offer some directions for future research by illuminating important issues that emerged from the conference but remain largely unanswered by the papers of this special issue.