Question

Elaborate the factors involved in sensing opportunities.

Answer 1

To sense an entrepreneurial opportunity, an entrepreneur employs his sharpened skills of observation, analysis and synthesis to identify an opening.
The most important factors involved in the process are:
(i)Ability to perceive and preserve basic ideas which could be used commercially.
(ii)Ability to harness different sources of information.
(iii)Vision and creativity.
(i)Ability to perceive and preserve basic ideas: Basic ideas emerge from various sources. These ideas can be categorized as follows :

Problems	Change	Inventions	Competition	Innovations
Solutions of a problem is often picked up as opportunity.	Any kind of change like social , legal , technological , political , etc .., user in new business opportunities . e.g.. Health care centre in the present world .	These involve new things of value and creative processes that add value to the already prevalent brands or products. e.g. Automatic Washing machines.	For getting ahead , the entrepreneur introduces new and improved ideas and various sales promotions techniques e.g.., free gift with a sale of product like Brush with toothpaste .	It includes creating new things of value as well as new and creative processes that add value to the existing products or services. For example , computers to tablets .

(ii) Ability to harness different sources of knowledge and information: The information gathered from different sources has to be analyzed and utilized for identification of the right opportunity. Various sources like magazines, journals, books, seminars, trade shows, family members, customers, friends, etc. help in getting information that results in evolution of basic ideas. Bring together various sources of information and knowledge, and analyze it to the best possible extent. The analysis helps in the identification of the right opportunity to start a new business.
(iii) Vision and Creativity: Creativity is the most striking behavioural characteristics of an entrepreneur. He should be able to develop an idea through a process of creativity and build something of value to solve a generated problem. Once the solution is identified their vision to convert the solution into business opportunity help them to move forward, overcoming all the obstacles. They constantly:
(a)overcome the adversity (b) are able to exercise control over the business (c) are capable of making significant difference.
Vision and Creativity: e.g. Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) technology to common man. Introducing WhatsApp free messaging, text, pictures.