TY - JOUR
T1 - Fostering university students’ entrepreneurial opportunity identification capability
T2 - A systematic literature review
AU - Farrokhnia, Mohammadreza
AU - Noroozi, Omid
AU - Baggen, Yvette
AU - Lans, Thomas
AU - Biemans, Harm
AU - Pittaway, Luke
PY - 2025/1/8
Y1 - 2025/1/8
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - UT-Hybrid-D
U2 - 10.1177/25151274241309938
DO - 10.1177/25151274241309938
M3 - Review article
SN - 2515-1274
JO - Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy
JF - Entrepreneurship Education and Pedagogy
ER -