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Entrepreneurial opportunities come in various forms and are influenced by socio-economic conditions. Increasingly entrepreneurs are being asked to take a more balanced approach between financial and environmental considerations when assessing an opportunity. The aim of this chapter is to discuss how entrepreneurial opportunities need to take an economics and sustainability perspective in the competitive global marketplace in order to keep up to date with contemporary business practices. This will enable a more transdisciplinary approach to the opportunity recognition process that integrates multiple disciplinary frameworks.

Social media marketing is a great tool for entrepreneurs because of its low cost, fast response and rich interactions. This study aims to examine how entrepreneurs use social media as a tool of marketing and how social media resources influence entrepreneurial opportunity evaluation.

The authors designed a mixed methods study with an open-ended question survey and a conjoint experiment. The authors sent out an online survey through M-Turk and collected 355 valid responses from entrepreneurs.

The results show that entrepreneurs consider social media as important to their businesses and that entrepreneurs consider their social media resources when they evaluate entrepreneurial opportunities.

This study enriches the understanding of entrepreneurial social media marketing by revealing the granular and nuanced descriptions and interpretations of social media marketing from entrepreneurs’ perspectives. This study also contributes to the entrepreneurial marketing literature by showing how different social media resources influence entrepreneurs’ evaluations and pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunities.

This paper aims to advocate for a paradigm shift that prioritizes a human-centered approach in the pursuit of innovation during crises, urging a departure from the prevailing dominance of the technology-centric approach. The incorporation of emotional capabilities as a dynamic capability is posited as a pivotal contribution, in harmony with the tenets of Society 5.0 and imperative for establishing a robust knowledge management foundation. This research underscores the significance of the human-centered approach, portraying women as exemplars in a novel paradigm of innovation development amid crises.

This research uses the framework of knowledge management for innovation to focus on the challenges presented by complex crises, now considered the new normal. The study employs a distinct, human centric approach to explore the nexus of gender, opportunities and innovation, during crises, with an emphasis on the founders’ emotional capabilities and resources as catalysts for innovation development.

This research utilizes mixed methods; qualitative findings driven from AI analyses reveal women’s positive approach toward innovation development in adversity, showcasing the influence of their emotional resources in their innovation pursuits. The subsequent quantitative findings, derived from a sample of 464 tech-founders navigating complex crises, emphasize the role of emotional capabilities as activators of opportunity exploitation for enhancing innovation development during crises, particularly among female founders.

The potential for future research lies in exploring diverse emotional dimensions, employing various measures and methodologies. Envisioning upcoming studies that extend our findings across institutional, national and crisis contexts, emotional capabilities and skills may emerge as critical assets relevant to all entrepreneurs, transcending gender boundaries. This paper’s framework sets the stage for promising avenues at the nexus of gender and emotional capabilities in the innovation pursuits, shaping entrepreneurial performance in both challenging and stable conditions.

This research contributes significantly in several key areas. Firstly, it explores innovation development and knowledge management within Society 5.0 during a polycrisis, emphasizing the crucial role of emotional capabilities in activating opportunity exploitation. Secondly, it champions a human-centric premise in innovation, highlighting women as role models for innovation during crises and introducing pathways to tap into external resources, ultimately enriching knowledge management. Thirdly, the innovative methodological approach using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to construct synthetic personas is groundbreaking. Finally, it advances effectuation, bricolage and dynamic capabilities frameworks, enriching their theoretical foundations and affirming their relevance for innovation development amid instability.

This study aims to examine the impact of entrepreneurial individual vision and entrepreneurial role models on perceived entrepreneurial opportunities resulting from the COVID-19 crisis while assessing the moderating role of entrepreneurial grit (passion and perseverance).

The research adopts an applied path analysis method using Hayes' PROCESS MACRO with SPSS. The statistical population consists of early-stage entrepreneurs participating in Iran’s 2020 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor international research program.

The results indicate that regardless of gender, age and education of participants, the “entrepreneurial individual vision” of early-stage entrepreneurs has a direct positive impact on their perception of entrepreneurial opportunities arising from COVID-19. Moreover, due to the challenging circumstances during the crisis, the role model of successful entrepreneurs who began their ventures during the pandemic influences early-stage entrepreneurs. That is to say, the role model has an impact on the perceived entrepreneurial opportunities resulting from COVID-19.

The study has focused exclusively on early-stage entrepreneurs. Hence, it is suggested that further research explores the influence of entrepreneurial vision characteristics among both early-stage and established entrepreneurs. Additionally, examining the interactions between their entrepreneurial role models, perseverance and types of entrepreneurial passion in relation to the perceived opportunities arising from the COVID-19 crisis would be valuable.

In critical situations, early-stage entrepreneurs persevere by maintaining a resilience spirit and stress management. As a result, they could identify new entrepreneurial opportunities in line with their entrepreneurial vision. Nevertheless, early-stage entrepreneurs should postpone exploiting those opportunities until a time close to the final stages of the crisis. Early-stage entrepreneurs should redefine a clear and effective entrepreneurial individual vision. Furthermore, they should firstly reinforce their growth mindset; secondly, apply a servant leadership style to their startups in order to enhance grit; and finally translate their vision into a shared vision in line with the expansion of their role models.

During times of crisis, societies require early-stage entrepreneurs, who possess an individual entrepreneurial vision, have access to entrepreneurial role models and exhibit perseverance to identify and capitalize on entrepreneurial opportunities generated by the COVID-19 crisis.

Unlike normal situations, during the COVID-19 pandemic, entrepreneurial grit (passion and perseverance) exhibits a mixed and paradoxical moderating effect; the entrepreneurial grit-passion dimension weakens the positive effect of “entrepreneurial vision” on “perceived entrepreneurial opportunities caused by COVID-19.” This is while the entrepreneurial grit-perseverance dimension normally strengthens this positive effect. Therefore, the Entrepreneurial Grit Paradox is the most important contribution of the study. In contrast with prevalent theoretical perspectives such as the views of Blank (2020) and Rise (2011), early-stage businesses begin with the entrepreneurial individual vision, grit-perseverance and their entrepreneurs' role models in crisis times.

States that an organization that seeks to survive must keep identifying viable new opportunities. An organization that wishes to grow must do an even better job of identifying viable new opportunities. However, opportunities are in the eye of the beholder. Identifying opportunities does not mean “find” them, rather we construct or invent them. How do we encourage the identification of viable, credible opportunities? Maybe even more important is the converse: why do decision makers fail to see objectively viable opportunities?

This article reports on some of the research findings of a two year study on equal opportunity commissioned by the Department of Employment. Although initially conceived as an investigation of “successfully” operating equal opportunity policies in private industry, the research data suggested that effective practice follows a different line of development. For, in practice, effective equal opportunity bore a closer relationship to everyday problem‐solving in organisations than to the adoption of formal policies abstracted from workplace issues and concerns. The success of equal opportunity policies and practices would appear to be contingent upon their direct relevance to workplace problems and the degree to which employees are involved in formulating and implementing them.

To streamline the process of opportunity recognition and make it more effective by clarifying the meaning of opportunity and making its elements explicit.

Clarifying opportunity is effected by providing a model and illustrating its effectiveness through application to examples and to SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis.

Provides support for the practical benefits of applying an explicit model for recognizing opportunity.

The model facilitates opportunity recognition by encouraging avoidance of common dead ends, including mistaking catalysts for opportunities, associating opportunities with negative conditions, equating options with opportunities and the circular process of defining opportunities in terms of strengths and weaknesses.

In an empirical study learning opportunities were identified. Learning opportunities are enablers or disablers for the achievement of shared understanding.

Actors were interviewed about their communication process. The learning history method was used to analyze and structure the data. From the learning histories learning opportunities were derived. Finally, the learning opportunities were categorized.

Learning opportunities were found on three levels: the actor, project and company level. They were also joined in six themes. Combining these two patterns showed that learning opportunities are interrelated.

The case study done was retrospective for the actors involved. Therefore, only conclusions could be drawn on the achievement of shared understanding. To be able to say more about the creation of shared understanding, following a NPD project real time would be desirable, in future research.

This study shows the importance for managers of looking across boundaries. Only solving problems integrally within the organization will help to solve problems successfully. Knowing the learning opportunities of a NPD project finished, will help them to improve future projects. The explicit use of storytelling during a NPD project may help to create a learning organization with shared understanding between the actors.

Previous research showed, shared understanding is important, to be able to manage the integration of different knowledge domains. However, these studies do not describe learning opportunities for the achievement of shared understanding, which was done in this study.

Evaluating and exploiting an opportunity is an iterative process, and one of the triggers for the re-evaluation is the feedback received from stakeholders. Most of the time, the feedback comes in the form of harsh comments, criticisms and rejections, which can cause shame. There is also a lack of studies on the impact of shame on the decision-making ability of the entrepreneur, which is addressed through this study.

The study uses an experimental design, which is considered the “gold standard” in establishing causality. By manipulating the emotions of 107 entrepreneurs and making them assess a hypothetical opportunity, the study finds conclusive evidence for the proposed hypotheses.

Using the appraisal tendency framework, the authors show that shame makes an entrepreneur assess an opportunity as lower in desirability and feasibility. Shame also makes an entrepreneur give more significant weight to feasibility (over desirability) when deciding on entrepreneurial action.

The study provides strong empirical evidence that shame is an important emotion and influences the decision-making ability of the entrepreneur. The study reveals that important stakeholders assessing entrepreneurs need to be careful about how they provide feedback. Since the emotion it can elicit has a bearing on the subsequent decisions made by the entrepreneur.

The concept of Construction 5.0 has emerged as the next frontier in construction practices and is characterized by the integration of advanced technologies with human-centered approaches, sustainable practices and resilience considerations to build smart and future-ready buildings. However, there is currently a gap in research that provides a comprehensive perspective on the opportunities and challenges of facilitating Construction 5.0. This study aims to explore the opportunities and challenges in facilitating Construction 5.0 and its potential to implement smart, sustainable and resilient buildings.

The structural equation modeling (SEM) method was used to evaluate the research model and investigate the opportunities and challenges related to Construction 5.0 in its implementation for smart, sustainable and resilient buildings.

The results show that adopting human-centric technology, sustaining resilience and maintaining sustainability in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry seizes the opportunities to overcome the challenges for facilitating Construction 5.0 in the implementation of smart, sustainable and resilient buildings.

The AEC industry facilitating Construction 5.0 has the potential to redefine the future of construction, creating a built environment that is not only intelligent, sustainable and resilient but also deeply connected with the well-being and values of the communities it serves.

The research illuminates the path forward for a holistic understanding of Construction 5.0, envisioning a future where smart, sustainable and resilient buildings stand as testaments to the harmonious collaboration between humans and technology.