Entrepreneurial opportunity pursuit through business model transformation: a project perspective

The purpose of this article is to improve our understanding of the theoretical and managerial implications of entrepreneurial pursuit once an opportunity has emerged as a possible and desirable future situation. We suggest opportunity pursuit is a project in nature and, through analytical conceptualization, we frame a newly termed and defined concept of “Opportunity Project”, described as the unique, temporary and judgmental transformation of business models, with the purpose of turning opportunities from a state of possibility to that of beneficial change delivery. The perspective proposed in this paper extends literature by (1) offering a novel consistent project-oriented view capable of clarifying the underlying and explicit mechanisms activated during the entrepreneurial pursuit of opportunities, (2) posing business model transformation as a critical dimension of such perspective and (3) suggesting a four stage cycle aimed at judgmental alignment and adaptation of strategy and execution. Doing so, this paper corroborates the ongoing movement of project management from an operational discipline towards organization and strategy fields and suggests, to two so far segregated communities of entrepreneurship and project management researchers, a joint stream of interest is possible and that it has potential to disclose knowledge and support entrepreneurial action in practice.