Conversing Opportunities into Existence: An Examination of Discourse Structures used within the Opportunity Development of Nascent Entrepreneurship

When entrepreneurs interact and receive feedback they sort through and transform various subjective venture ideas into intersubjective venture concepts. This dissertation examines the dialogue of entrepreneurs in the nascent stages of opportunity development from a process theory approach to understand how entrepreneurs sort, navigate and make sense of ideas they encounter through feedback exchanges. Using conversational analysis, several conversation patterns are identified that shape the emergence process. Legitimacy associations, status quo assertions, experiential actualities, engagement hypotheticals, and deontic declarations contribute to the nonlinear opportunity emergence process. These discourse structures derived from speech acts are attended to, adopted, and implemented as they align with assessment filters of credibility, feasibility, desirability, and identity plausibility which are key elements of the opportunity interpretation process used during ideation and pivoting interactions.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Business, Executive Business Research

Department dc:contributor.department

Business

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Haines, Howard K.

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Townsend, David

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Beal, Daniel J.
• Pitterson, Nicole
• Hunt, Richard A.

• Opportunity Emergence
• Entrepreneurial Sensemaking
• Conversation Analysis

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:36293

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/113743