cannot be identified and exploited by all potential entrepreneurs. To identify and then exploit an opportunity, the individual must first be in a position to do so, and have the required skills, resources and networks. Therefore opportunities depend on the individual and his or her possible room for manoeuvre. To illustrate our theory, a company for sale, for instance, is a real, objective market opportunity, but the individual interested in takeovers must have access to this information in order to identify the opportunity. Furthermore, this opportunity must be compatible with the individual’s aspirations and resources in order for him or her to act upon it.
A system is born, is transformed and creates new value
When the process succeeds, the project emerges, fuelled by the initial idea or vision and all the work accomplished. Then the project gives way to a new activity or a new business. The individual is initially the bearer of a project and then becomes a business manager. The entrepreneurial individual/new value creation dialogic emerges and the project or created object progressively puts constraints on the individual.
During the process, individuals will commit themselves more and more to the project (Becker and Sexton 1989),which will lead to irreversibility, if they do not opt out. Irreversibility stems from economic, social, psychological and professional disengagement costs. Irreversibility of commitment means that individuals focus exclusively on their project (Becker and Sexton 1989; Sapienza et al. 1991). Entrepreneurs will put all their time, efforts and resources into set- ting up the project, and later into running the new company, at the expense of their other activities. The system is progressively transformed, and Figure 6.2 attempts to represent these transformations. Before commitment takes place, the vision or the project (V-P), at this stage still an internal process, is totally dominated by the individual who is embedded in environments that influence him or her. But as commitment escalates, the project will be partly autonomous while becoming a new business. A project emerges from this process, which can in turn generate a new autonomous organisation. It also trans- forms the individual who, along the way, will change social identity, experiencing the evolution of his or her social network, value system,