Abstract
The space within which the entrepreneurs exist is filled with risks,
opportunities and other environmental resources. Scholars have argued
that entrepreneurs are constantly discovering and identifying value
potentials because significant values arise from the existence of
positive externalities which can be captured and exploited. Positive
externalities or opportunities can create substantial and desirable
gains if they can be monetized, leveraged and exploited. These
externalities refer to the natural environmental resources within the
space where the entrepreneurs operate (Hoogendoorn et al., 2019). From
the perspective of space, this paper will explore the emergence of
opportunities or risks within the space through the theoretical lens of
structuration and complex science and will specifically discuss the
collision and the meeting of opportunities with the entrepreneurs at the
nexus from the perspective of entrepreneurial energy excitation.
Entrepreneurship originates from a nexus of individuals and
opportunities (Shane, 2003). The unique juncture in space or nexus in
which the entrepreneurs and opportunities exist is central to the study
of entrepreneurship because it is in this juncture or nexus that
identification and evaluation of risks and opportunities take place. It
is the subsequent human actions, driven by the level of entrepreneurial
energy that will lead to the myriad of possible venture pathways. For
risks, entrepreneurs perceive them and will subsequent work towards
mitigation or avoidance through varied measures. The exploitation of
opportunities is concerned with acquiring and employing resources in the
space to gain certain advantages. Likewise, with risks, entrepreneurs
perceive the risks and work towards the mitigation or avoidance of the
perceived risk in the venture pathways.
In this paper, entrepreneurship is viewed through structuration and
complexity science lens to present the entrepreneurial venture as the
instantiated outcome of the entrepreneur–opportunity interaction
through time and space (Sarason et al., 2006). Complexity science offers
a theoretical lens for exploring the complex interdependencies of a
complex, and adaptive pluralistic world with irreversibility and
randomness being the rules- a dynamical systems in the natural and
physical worlds. The key central concept of complexity is that
interactivities between parts of open systems that creates unpredictable
and seemingly random patterns. While the history of the open system is
relevant in understanding its dynamics, the specific isolation of
individual part of the system does not reveal the casual mechanisms in
the system (Fuller & Moran, 2001).
The paper explores whether how entrepreneurial energy arise from the
convergence/ collision of entrepreneurs with opportunities in a
dynamical, unpredictable and random way in a nexus in space.