Fostering university students’ entrepreneurial opportunity identification capability: A systematic literature review

Mohammadreza Farrokhnia*, Omid Noroozi, Yvette Baggen, Thomas Lans, Harm Biemans, Luke Pittaway

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articleAcademicpeer-review

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Abstract

Fostering university students’ Opportunity Identification (OI) capability has received much attention from entrepreneurship scholars. There is, however, a lack of comprehensive understanding of “why” some students can better identify business opportunities and “how” their OI capability can be improved. This systematic review aims to synthesize the research findings on university students’ OI capability to answer the above questions and propose evidence-informed guidance for entrepreneurship educators when developing programs designed to enhance this key entrepreneurial capability. In this regard, 44 empirical studies (out of 945 peer-reviewed articles) on OI, dating from 2000 through 2022, were reviewed. The findings were categorized by answering five essential questions raised by the adopted teaching model framework, i.e., “why?”, “for whom?”, “for which results?”, “what?”, and “how?”. The findings indicate that students’ prior knowledge, entrepreneurial alertness, and creativity are the most influential factors in the OI process. The research found that developing students’ opportunity identification capability requires guiding them through three distinct stages, namely, triggering, idea generation, and idea evaluation, within a constructively aligned learning environment. The paper concludes by presenting several suggestions and directions for future research.
Original languageEnglish
Number of pages47
JournalEntrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy
Early online date8 Jan 2025
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print/First online - 8 Jan 2025

Keywords

  • UT-Hybrid-D

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