Master’s Thesis
Migrant entrepreneurs on Dutch markets.
Focusing on opportunity recognition
process.
University of Amsterdam
Faculty of Economics and Business
MSc Business Studies
By: Maxim Goroshkov
Student Number: 10395938
First Supervisor: Dr. Tsvi Vinig
Second Supervisor: Dr. Wietze van der Aa
Date: 14-09-2013
1
Abstract
This research study presents the analysis of factors, which influence the migrant’s
opportunity recognition process on the Dutch market. There is a research gap, as
many researches studied the question of an opportunity recognition in general, but
few of them studied the factors, which influence migrant’s ORP. The main aim of this
research paper is to define group of factors, which influence on opportunity
recognition process in general and to find out which are more influential on the
migrant’s ORP. Moreover, the current research will examine the Dutch market, as it is
considered to be one of the most friendly markets, due to formal and informal systems.
The research paper will examine the model of factors influence, and, due to
qualitative research analysis provide significant factors and the answer, which of them
are more important and which are less.
Key words: opportunity recognition, migrant, minor, Dutch market, entrepreneurship,
factors
2
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I - Introduction ................................................................................. 5
CHAPTER II - Literature analysis .................................................................... 10
Opportunity recognition process ............................................................................................................ 10
Migrant entrepreneurship ......................................................................................................................... 14
Factors for ORP............................................................................................................................................... 16
Dutch market situation and conditions ................................................................................................ 21
Model .................................................................................................................................................................. 23
CHAPTER III – Methodology ................................................................................ 25
Sample ................................................................................................................................................................ 26
Case selection .................................................................................................................................................. 26
Research instruments and procedures................................................................................................. 27
Data collection ................................................................................................................................................ 27
Interview procedure .................................................................................................................................... 27
Data analysis .................................................................................................................................................... 27
CHAPTER IV – Results .......................................................................................... 29
Participant’s overview ................................................................................................................................. 29
Data analysis .................................................................................................................................................... 31
Networking....................................................................................................................................................... 31
Prior Knowledge ............................................................................................................................................ 33
Networking and Prior knowledge .......................................................................................................... 35
Personal characteristics .............................................................................................................................. 37
Creativity ................................................................................................................................................................37
Ambitions................................................................................................................................................................38
Self-confidence ..................................................................................................................................................... 38
Risk-taking .............................................................................................................................................................40
Optimism ................................................................................................................................................................40
Correlation and links ........................................................................................................................................41
Education .......................................................................................................................................................... 41
Previous experience ..................................................................................................................................... 43
Culture ................................................................................................................................................................ 44
Native cultural benefits .................................................................................................................................... 45
Other factors for ORP ................................................................................................................................... 48
Place of living.......................................................................................................................................................48
Entrepreneurship in family .............................................................................................................................48
Motivation .............................................................................................................................................................. 48
Working status......................................................................................................................................................50
Entrepreneurial alertness ................................................................................................................................50
Solo entrepreneur or work in team..............................................................................................................51
Dutch market ................................................................................................................................................... 52
Reason for migration ....................................................................................................................................... 52
Local culture .........................................................................................................................................................53
Local rules, taxes and legal system .............................................................................................................54
Final model ....................................................................................................................................................... 55
CHAPTER V – Discussion ...................................................................................... 58
Migrant entrepreneurship ......................................................................................................................... 58
Migrant entrepreneurs on Dutch market ............................................................................................ 59
Factors which impact on migrant’s ORP .............................................................................................. 61
Model .................................................................................................................................................................. 63
Limitations and Future Research ............................................................................................................ 64
3
CHAPTER VI - Conclusion ..................................................................................... 66
Bibliography ...................................................................................................... 68
Appendix 1 – Interview Questions ..................................................................... 71
4
CHAPTER I - Introduction
The 21st century can be called a “Global century” and we live in a time, when
everybody has great opportunities to choose where to live, work, and start his own
business or a start-up. Because of this, this century can also be called a century of
entrepreneurship and opportunities.
Nowadays, each person in the world is faced a great number of opportunities. They
can come up in sports, at school, and even while cooking. Each day a great number of
new start-ups are launched. But not everyone is able to recognize these opportunities
and become an entrepreneur.
This research paper is devoted to the question migrant opportunity recognition
processes (ORP), and to factors, which influence the entrepreneurial opportunity
recognition process. For many years different researchers have been arguing about
different topics and themes, connected with entrepreneurship, factors, and main
abilities of an ideal entrepreneur, but rarely, they argued about one thing: that
opportunity recognition plays the main, fundamental, core, basic or even key aspect of
the entrepreneurial process. So, many of the researchers tried to understand the
process of opportunity recognition and to understand key factors, which influence the
success of opportunity evaluation. They made attempts to estimate which factors are
more important and which are less.
The end of the 20th century and first years of the 21st century were devoted to the
question of the opportunity recognition process in the perspective of entrepreneurial
process (Shane, 2000, Shane & Eckhardt, 2003), where they find out and prove the
fact, that ORP is a core and key process for entrepreneurs. Later on, based on these
articles, researches try to estimate factors, which influence on success of ORP and
create concepts, models and frameworks (Ardichvili & Cardozo, 2000, Ardichvili et
al., 2003). Over the last several years, researches tried to look at the ORP as a part of
global and international entrepreneurship (Kontinen, 2010, Butler, 2010) and build
their own models and try to find out factors which influence the international
5
opportunity recognition process, through the perspective of internationalization. But
nobody tried to find out the factors which have an impact on the ORP of migrant
entrepreneurs.
The topic of the thesis is “Migrant entrepreneurs on Dutch markets. Focusing on
factors of opportunity recognition process”. That is why, the current paper will consist
of three main parts: opportunity recognition process (ORP), factors which influence
on ORP and migrant entrepreneurship.
Opportunity recognition process
Opportunity recognition process is supposed to be the core process and is considered
to become the fundamental topic of this research. The basic entrepreneurial
opportunity definition is the situation in which new goods, services, raw materials,
markets and organizing methods can be introduced through the formation of new
means, ends, or means-ends relationships (Shane & Eckharts, 2003). In other words,
opportunity recognition is a process, where entrepreneurs find the ability to create his
own venture and to add his own value.
As it was mentioned above, opportunity recognition process is the theory which
wasn’t strongly argued or discussed, but became the starting point for many
researches to work on this topic and discover other new fields, focusing on the fact,
that OR is a key process for entrepreneurs.
Factors for ORP
According to the first articles about the ORP until nowadays a great number of
researches have created several models of ORP, studied great number of factors and
prerequisites which have impact on this process. The first factors which were
screened were creativity, asymmetry of information, networking and prior knowledge
(Shane, 2000, Shane & Eckhardt, 2003). But, there are two successful models and
frameworks, which examined the question of factors, which have an influence on the
ORP. Opportunity recognition process model consists of 5 main factors:
entrepreneurial alertness, extend social networks, prior knowledge about market,
customer and customer problems, and creativity (Ardichvili & Cardozo, 2000). It was
the first big model for estimating the connection between ORP and this factors. After
6
this model, Ardichvili broadened it to four main groups of factors: personal, social
networks, prior knowledge and entrepreneurial alertness which influenced on core
process of Opportunity Recognition (OR) (Ardichvili et.al., 2003). All groups consist
of several factors.
As a result, the Framework of Opportunity centered Entrepreneurship came about. It
consists of four main stages: creating and exploring opportunity, planning to realize
the opportunity, acting on opportunity and personal entrepreneurship, with an
entrepreneurial OR in the center of a framework. Each stage included different factors
and questions.
So, those two frameworks have things in common and some different parts, but they
all include major factors or groups of factors, which impact on ORP.
Of course, there were other researches, who analyzed influence of exact factors, such
as education (Arenius et.al., 2005), social sources of information (Ozgen et.al., 2007)
and the impact of genetic perspectives (Nicolaou et.al., 2009) All important factors
will be included into the model of current research paper.
From general ORP to migrant ORP
The concept of globalization and international entrepreneurship also played a
significant role and couldn’t be ignored in the discussion of opportunity recognition.
Mainly, at the end of the 20th century and beginning of 21st century, many domestic
ventures tried to find opportunities outside the boundaries of their domestic markets
and to become first entrepreneurs on emerging markets. That is why, many researches
continued defining the ORP, but they changed the perspective from a general
definition for domestic markets to international markets.
Thus, factors such as network ties in the international ORP (Kontinen, 2010),
uncertainty, risks and prior knowledge about the market and customers problems
(Butler, 2010) were studied in last few years. However, there is one problem in the
focus of these studies: they examine factors and their impact focusing on
internationalization. So, Kontinen and Butler looked at existing domestic ventures,
which tried to find opportunities on new markets outside the region.
7
If we look through major studies about migrant entrepreneurship in Europe and,
especially, on Dutch markets, we will find some models and factors, which try to
describe the entrepreneurial behavior of migrant entrepreneurs. Rarely, they are
devoted to ORP. And none of these studies try to combine migrant entrepreneurship
and factors for ORP, that is why this gap has to be removed during current research.
The relevance, actuality, and interest of this thesis are connected with two main
things. First, due to the latest findings, the number of migrant entrepreneurs on Dutch
market is relatively more than native one and the number of migrant entrepreneurs
grew more rapidly than native one. From 1999-2004, the number of migrant
entrepreneurs grew 44%, while the increase of native entrepreneurs was only 2%.
Second, the main aim of current research is to fill in the gap in the studies, as there are
no other articles or researches devoted to these factors, which influence on a migrant
ORP, which will help to understand the entrepreneurial behavior of migrant
entrepreneurs and to find out their main advantages and disadvantages.
The importance and interest of this topic is really relevant to today, as one in five
businesses is set in the Netherlands by migrant entrepreneurs (Nijkamp, Sahin and
Baycan-Levent, 2009). Also, in the 21st century many people move away from their
native countries, where they have really high barriers to become employees, that is
why, the majority of them are more likely to become self-employed and work for
themselves. That is why, it is becoming more common for local entrepreneurs to
become in touch with migrant entrepreneurs and have to compete, not only among
themselves, but also, with migrant entrepreneurs, who have their own weaknesses and
strengthens.
Central Question
How do migrant entrepreneurs recognise opportunities? What factors influence the
migrant’s opportunity recognition process, in the case of the Netherlands?
To help answer the central question, supporting sub-questions are made:
1)
Is networking an important factor for migrant’s ORP?
8
2)
Which type (source) of prior knowledge has more influence on a migrant’s
ORP?
3)
Which personal traits of character influence migrant’s ORP?
4)
Which other factors have influence on migrant’s ORP?
5)
What factors are more important for the ORP and which factors have no
influence on migrant’s OPR?
6)
Why migrants choose Dutch market for entrepreneurship?
Through multiple case-study method this paper aims to uncover the influence of
different factors on opportunity recognition process of the main groups of
entrepreneurs: migrant.
Sample
The sample consists of migrant entrepreneurs who had or have their own business on
the Dutch market. The size for survey should be at least 10 case studies with migrant
entrepreneurs. A migrant entrepreneur is an entrepreneur, who wasn’t born in Holland,
but moved to the Netherlands and started his own venture or a start-up. The
motivation for coming to the Netherlands is not relevant.
The paper is structured in the following way. The first part is a literature analysis
chapter, during which all background information needed to answer the research
question will be studied. Then a methodology section outlining choices to opt for a
qualitative type of study, where process of data collection and data analysis are
described. An extensive summary of the findings is presented, followed by the
discussion that draws on the most important results as well as implications and
limitations. And, finally, the chapter devoted to main conclusions. The paper finishes
with bibliography and appendix with standard interview questions at the very end.
9
CHAPTER II - Literature analysis
Opportunity recognition process
The topic of opportunity recognition process in entrepreneurship has been studied for
the past century, of course, a lot of different researchers have created their own
definitions, ergo there are different types of entrepreneurship. To be clear, here are
main definitions of the ORP, entrepreneurship and migrant entrepreneurship, which
will be used for this thesis.
The ORP appears to include three distinct processes: (1) sensing or perceiving market
needs and/or underemployed resources, (2) recognizing or discovering a “fit” between
particular market needs and specified resources, and (3) creating a new “fit” between
heretofore separate needs and resources in the form of a business concept. These
processes represent, respectively, perception, discovery, and creation — not simply
“recognition” (Ardichvili, Cardozo and Ray, 2003). But, opportunity development
and opportunity recognition are two distinct processes (Ardichvili and Cardozo,
2000). So, there is also an opportunity development process, but, for this thesis, the
recognition is considered to be the main part.
The last main definition for this paper is a definition of migrant entrepreneurship.
Migrant entrepreneurship is an entrepreneurship lead by migrants, people who were
born in another country and who have moved away from their native country to
another and started their own business in another country.
For the past 30 years, a great number of theories in entrepreneurship have sought to
explain entrepreneurship as a function of the types of people engaged in
entrepreneurial activity, and that is why many researchers have largely overlooked the
role of opportunities. And all of them considered identifying and selecting right
opportunities for new business as among the most important abilities of a successful
entrepreneur. Some researchers have tended to take a person-centric perspective, in
which entrepreneurship depends on stable, enduring differences among people rather
than differences in the information they possess about the presence of opportunities
(Shane, Eckhardt, 2003).
10
Ardichvili, Cardozo also find out that entrepreneurial opportunities can't be exploited
by optimizing because the set of alternatives in introducing new things is unknown.
And, while non-entrepreneurial decisions maximize scarce resources across
previously developed means and ends, entrepreneurs involve the creation of new ends
and means previously undetected or unutilized by market participants (Ardichvili,
Cardozo, 2000).
The information asymmetry that creates opportunities in the first place is
subsequently reduced by the diffusion of information about the opportunity (Shane
and Eckhardt, 2003).
But, as it is described in the article (Shane, Eckhardt, 2003), different researchers
assume, that opportunity recognition process is not only the result of information
asymmetry, but also a result of changes in a variety of parts of the value chain.
Furthermore, Schumpeter suggested five different opportunities in changing: those
that stem from the creation of new products or services, those that stem from the
discovery of new geographical markets, those that emerge from the creation or
discovery of new raw materials, those that emerge from new methods of production,
and those that are generated from new ways of organizing (Shane and Eckhardt,
2003).
Other studies are also based on several findings about the ORP. In general, to find out
the main studies, which can be considered the fundamental in this research paper,
approaches from three main schools will be described and compared.
Three main schools of researchers are: Neoclassical economists, psychologists, and
Austrian economists. First of all, neoclassical economists have proposed equilibrium
theories of entrepreneurship, thus, they assume, that markets are composed of
maximizing agents whose collective decisions about prices clear markets. Also, in the
equilibrium framework, no one can discover an opportunity that would generate an
entrepreneurial profit because, at any point in time, all opportunities have been
recognized and all transactions perfectly coordinated, as in equilibrium theory, people
are not allowed to recognize opportunities that other don’t see. In general, equilibrium
11
theories assume that (1) everyone can recognize all entrepreneurial opportunities, and
(2) fundamental attributes of people, rather than information about opportunities,
determine who becomes an entrepreneur. For example, Khilstrom and Laffont's model
proposes that people with a greater taste for uncertainty will choose to become
entrepreneurs, whereas people with a lesser taste for uncertainty will choose to
become employees (Shane, 2000).
Frankly speaking, It’s clear that neoclassical economists, who follow the theory of
equilibrium are far from reality, as all people in the world can meet and find different
opportunities.
The second school, which tried to analyze the ORP and provide a fundamental
definition, were psychologists. They have proposed theories which state
entrepreneurship is a characteristic possessed by some people and not others. That is
why such traits of character, need for achievement of results, willingness to bear risks,
self-efficacy, etc. lead some people and not others to become entrepreneurs. Their
framework generally focuses on the decision to exploit opportunities rather than on
their discovery (Venkataraman 1997). That is why, the ability for opportunity
recognition is also linked with personal traits of character. To summarize,
psychological theories assume that (1) fundamental attributes of people, rather than
information about opportunities, determine who becomes an entrepreneur; and (2) this
process depends on people's ability and willingness to take action.
Finally, the last school from the list above is the school of Austrian economists. They
believed that equilibrium approaches fail to offer a satisfying theoretical framework
for understanding market processes. They assumed, that the theory can’t suppose
equilibrium, but theory has to describe the process, how to achieve the equilibrium
from non-equilibrium conditions. As all other researchers, Austrians assumed that all
the people have different information, which helps them to see different opportunities,
which others can’t see.
To briefly summarize, (1) Austrians consider that everyone has different information,
which helps to see other opportunities. And (2) due to these opportunities, everyone
can become an entrepreneur.
12
With regard to neoclassical approach to the ORP and entrepreneurship, it can be said,
that it is far from reality. Talking about psychologists and Austrians, it’s better to
make a combination from two approaches and to find differences and similarities, to
assume the theory based on personal traits of character and on asymmetry of
information to form the approach for the current research paper.
Of course, the Austrian perspective can be considered most important with regard to
the ORP, mainly because its framework provides different explanations for the
discovery, exploitation, and organization of entrepreneurial opportunities from other
frameworks.
First, Austrian economics doesn’t view the process of opportunity recognition as
mechanical. If any given entrepreneur can’t necessarily discover more than one
commercial application for any given technological change, then entrepreneurs can’t
actively select between alternative opportunities (Kirzner 1985).
Second, Austrians believe that the possession of information that is appropriate to a
particular opportunity leads to opportunity recognition, and they don’t believe that
anyone is more likely than anyone else to become an entrepreneur across all
opportunities.
Third, unlike both neoclassical economics and psychology, Austrian economics
considers opportunity exploitation to be endogenous to opportunity discovery.
Lastly, the Austrian explanation for entrepreneurship generates different implications
from the other two frameworks for who becomes an entrepreneur, how
entrepreneurial efforts are organized in the economy, and how the government can
influence the entrepreneurial process.
If we rely only on the Austrian’s framework, it can be seen that they forget about
important things, which are a part of psychologist’s theory. Thus, it can be mentioned,
that Austrians consider, that none is more likely than another to become an
entrepreneur and to recognize an opportunity. But, the 21st century gives us another
example: there is a link between finding an opportunity and becoming an
13
entrepreneur. All people are different, and have different traits of character,
motivations and conditions. That is why the psychologist’s theory is needed to prove
the fact, that there are different factors, which influence both on ORP and on the
willingness to become an entrepreneur.
In conclusion, that opportunity recognition process is supposed to be the main process
for all entrepreneurs. Different people, due to information asymmetry and other
factors, can find different opportunities, but even this is not proof that each person
who recognizes an opportunity will become an entrepreneur; not each entrepreneur
finds a unique opportunity. So, it is assumed that different people see different
opportunities, which is linked with different group of factors and ORP is the main
process in entrepreneurship.
ORP has been clarified for entrepreneurs in general. But, before this discussion can be
furthered, it has to be clarified what is migrant entrepreneurship, what is the main
difference between entrepreneurs in general and migrant entrepreneurs, how they find
opportunities. This is explained in the next subchapter.
Migrant entrepreneurship
From a global perspective, many people are on the move; international migration has
become a key feature of a modern open society (Gorter, Nijkamp, and Poot 1998). Of
course, migration is sometimes connected with negative economical changes, as
society gains a low-paid labor, which works more efficiently than local employees
with higher salaries. But still, migration touches all countries in the world. According
to the latest findings, there are more than 230 million migrants all over the world,
making migrants 5% of the total global population.
All migrants come in contact with a vast variety of problems. The most relevant
personal characteristics mentioned in many studies that explain why migrants become
self-employed are: the lower education level of migrants put them in a less favored
position in society, which ultimately results in a high level of unemployment among
migrant communities. The creation of firms by migrants is also a reaction to other
negative factors, such as job discrimination, language barriers or poorly paid jobs,
14
which all go to explain the increasing number of ethnic firms in certain geographical
areas.
The existence of migrant and social networks also plays a major role in their
motivation, because it encourages migrants to start their own businesses. In general,
migrants are more likely to be self-employed than similarly skilled, native-born
workers. This is why self-employment rates of migrants exceed those of native-born
citizens in many countries (Baycan-Levent and Nijkamp, 2009).
The entrepreneurial behavior of many migrant groups has led to the rise of a new
phenomenon called ‘migrant entrepreneurship’ or ‘ethnic entrepreneurship’. Migrant
entrepreneurship has played a crucial role in increasing the employment opportunities
for ethnic segments in urban populations, and in resolving social tensions and
problems.
According to Baycon-Levent’s article, migrant entrepreneurs are a heterogeneous
group of businessmen and women and may differ in orientation, motivation, and
economic performance. Migrants are motivated to opt for entrepreneurship in order to
be independent, to be their own boss (propensity to take risks), to have extra income
(profit), to gain some work experience, or to maintain family tradition; or they are
dissatisfied with their previous job, need flexibility, want to make a career, or have
ideological reasons (desire to innovate) or leadership qualities.
Of course, there are different migrants. Mainly, migrants differ in terms of motivation
for migration, their native language, religion, level of education, their country of birth,
demographic background, networking with other migrants, access to family business
and other factors.
Even more, migration led to the study of migrant embeddedness. And, in the end of
the 20th century, Granovetter went beyond that and he has distinguished two types of
embeddedness: relational and structural embeddedness. Relational embeddedness
refers to ‘economic actors’ and involves personal relations with one another. Migrant
entrepreneurs are thus embedded in a concrete network of social relations with
customers, suppliers, banks, competitors, and law enforcers. Structural embeddedness
15
relates to the broader network to which these actors belong. Also, there is a so-called
mixed embeddedness, which is important for the exact thesis, as, mixed embeddness
is considered to be the main feature of migrants in the Netherlands (Baycan-Levent
and Nijkamp, 2009)
As it has been mentioned above, migrants are more likely to become entrepreneurs,
than native ones. Whether, they become entrepreneurs, they should find opportunities
for their ventures and start-ups. As it is known, opportunities occur in markets and
there has to be a sufficient demand for a certain bundle of products otherwise no
entrepreneur can make a living. So, it can be assumed, that migrant’s ORP is much
more easier, than the ORP in general, as migrants have just to find a market with
some demand. In other words, migrant entrepreneurs have much lower requests.
Talking about ORP in general and making a comparison with migrant’s ORP, it is
clear, that they have no difference, but still, have a huge difference in motivation,
factors, approach and requests to looking for an opportunity. Migrant entrepreneurs
have to find an opportunity to start their own business, without having any
alternatives, if they want to stay abroad, while native entrepreneurs, often, continue
looking for something new after they already found an idea. It goes without saying,
that migrant entrepreneurs not only can, but create new and innovative start-ups,
which local entrepreneurs can’t even mention.
Factors for ORP
During the literature analysis, many factors, studied for the last 30 years were
analyzed to find out, which of them, can be sufficient for a special target audience, as
migrant entrepreneurs and to find out, how migrant entrepreneurs find opportunities,
why they are successful and, finally, to understand their advantages and
disadvantages.
Austrian’s theory describes that all people are different and can see different
opportunities, a common theme in much researches on opportunity recognition,
however, has been the suggestion that information plays a crucial role in this process.
And, as Shane mentions, access to relevant information plays a crucial role in the
ORP, and can differ depending on the source (Shane 2000).
16
So, what are the main factors for the ORP in general? First of all, many researchers
point out networking as one of the most important factors for the ORP. Networks are
mainly divided into two groups: with weak and strong ties. Entrepreneurs, who have
extended networks (have more weak ties), identify more opportunities, as they have
an access to more sources of information (Ardichvili and Cardozo, 2000). Instead
Ozgen and Baron in their study consider, that people, who have mentors (strong ties)
advance not only in their careers more rapidly, but also achieve greater recognitions,
than those, who don’t have (Ozgen and Baron, 2007). Finally, in the argues between
weak and strong ties, Arenius and Clercq find out, that people with more weak ties are
more likely to recognize opportunities, but strong ties provide entrepreneurs with
higher quality of information (Arenius and Clercq, 2013). In other words, the greater
networking entrepreneur has, the more information he gets, and more opportunities
can be found out, but the quality of the information can be tested through the strong
ties: friends, parents or other close people.
Also, Ardichvili, Cardozo along with Ozgen and Baron see the link between
networking and entrepreneurial alertness (Ardichvili and Cardozo, 2000; Ozgen and
Baron, 2007). Ardichvili and Cardozo argue, that networking stress the importance of
entrepreneurial alertness, while Ozgen and Baron underline, that mentors can help to
make entrepreneurs more alert to new business opportunities.
This can be also a hypothesis, if weak ties stress the importance of entrepreneurial
alertness, or strong ties helps to be more alert, or, networking has no influence on
entrepreneurial alertness.
Networking is an extremely interesting factor for a migrant’s ORP, which has to be
included into model and tested during the case study.
Ardichvili and Cardozo define entrepreneurial alertness (awareness) as, a propensity
to notice and be sensitive to information about objects, incidents and patterns of
behavior in the environment, with special sensitivity to maker and user problems,
unmet needs and interest, and novel combination of resources (Ardichvili and
17
Cardozo, 2000). In other words, the higher EA is, the higher is the likelihood for the
opportunity recognition.
Entrepreneurial alertness can be formed in two groups: entrepreneurs, who find the
opportunity “accidentally”, and who have undergone a formal search. Ardichvili and
Cardozo tested, that entrepreneurs, who found an opportunity “accidentally” achieve
break-even results faster (Ardichvili and Cardozo, 2000).
Entrepreneurial alertness is not really efficient for migrant entrepreneurs, as they are
mostly limited in time to look for variety of opportunities, as they need money for
living. Still, it can be tested, whether migrant entrepreneurs continue to look for
additional opportunities or start to develop the recognized idea. .
The other source of information is a prior knowledge. Frankly speaking, prior
knowledge is met in many research papers and is definitely supposed to be one of the
main factors for the ORP.
Shane maintains that any entrepreneur will discover only those opportunities, related
to his or her prior knowledge (Shane, 2000). Prior knowledge is also considered to be
a so-called “corridor”, where entrepreneur can recognize an opportunity (Ardichvili
and Cardozo, 2000).
Entrepreneurs can get this prior knowledge from their personal experience, as a
customer, while education, during their previous working experience and other
sources, such as prior knowledge of local market or the prior knowledge of other
people from their networking.
Talking about education, the difference in hypothesis can be mentioned once again.
Ardichvili and Cardozo (2000) point out, that education is not an important factor for
the ORP, while Arenius and Clercq (2013) support the idea, that the higher level of
education is, the more likely the opportunity will be recognized. Moreover, education
provides a wider knowledge base, which can influence on self-confidence. In brief,
education as a factor for a migrant’s ORP has to be tested, although the link between
education and self-confidence can’t be tested, due to limitations of qualitative method.
18
Along with networking, prior knowledge will be tested, as a factor for a migrant’s
ORP. It is also important to understand, which exact type (source) of prior knowledge
has the most influence on the ORP.
One of the most discussed and tested factor is creativity. Entrepreneurial creativity is
an ability to rapidly recognize the associations between problems and their purposed
solutions by identification of non-obvious associations and by reforming available
resources in a non-obvious way, finding new opportunities. Researchers are divided
into two main groups: first, who consider, that creativity as a main trait of any
entrepreneur, and second, who find out no correlation between creativity and the
ORP.
Ardichvili and Cardozo (2000) also find, that solo entrepreneurs are more creative,
than those, who are more well-networked or work in team, that is why, more likely to
recognize new opportunities.
On the whole, creativity, as a factor will be tested in current research, however, the
link between creativity and work in team or solo entrepreneurship is also limited due
to the qualitative method, which is used in current research.
Arenius and Clercq (2013) find a unique and a new factor, which hasn’t been studied
before: the working status. They say, that individuals with an active working status
(employed) are more likely to recognize opportunities, than individuals with passive
status (unemployed).
However, migrant entrepreneurship became popular, due to employment problems.
That is why, this factor can be included into the final questionnaire, but not into the
final model.
Besides networking and prior knowledge factors, personal traits of character and
personal characteristics of migrant entrepreneur may also influence the ORP. Some of
them are already discussed in different articles and will be included into the model.
19
Age is supposed to have no impact on the ORP (Arenius and Clercq, 2013). While,
gender is considered to be a factor, and men are more likely to find an opportunity,
than women. Due to methodological limitations, age and gender will be included to
describe entrepreneur and to get some additional general information, but will not be
tested statistically due to the chosen method.
Optimism, Ambitions, Risk-taking, Self-confidence are also factors for the ORP.
Ardichvili, Cardozo and Ray (2003) point out optimism in their list of factors. Ozgen
and Baron (2007) analyzed and also found out, that self-confidence has an impact on
the ORP. Indeed, confidence helps to “sell”—persons high on his dimension and tend
to provide entrepreneur with broader social networks and to be more popular than
persons lacking in self-confidence. Self-confidence, risk-taking and ambitions will be
tested for the migrant’s ORP.
Next two factors are unique and were met in literature only once. First factor is the
place of living, which is connected with perception of opportunities. Individuals,
living in big agglomerates are more likely to perceive opportunities, that this, living in
urban or rural areas (Arenius and Clercq, 2013). Since, this factor is connected with
the ORP, it will be included into the final questionnaire.
Second factor, was tested by four researchers: Nicolaou, Shane, Cherkas and Spector
during their study, trying to prove, that the ORP is a genetic factor. They made first
steps in the research to find it out and prove, that, the ORP and a tendency to become
an entrepreneur can be a genetic prerequisite and, that same genetic factors which
influence opportunity recognition, also influence the probability to become an
entrepreneur (Nicolaou, Shane, Cherkas and Spector, 2009). In other words, if
entrepreneur was brought up in entrepreneurial family, it would also influence on his
probability to become an entrepreneur and his ORP. Since, genetic factor can be
tested only in biology, using special personal tests, current research will try to shed
some light on this question and to find out, whether there can be correlation between
entrepreneurship in family with the migrant’s ORP.
By the way, migrant entrepreneurs differ due to their country of origin. Though,
migrants move from one country to another, it can be argued, that their native culture,
20
traditions, mentality, and even, the market conditions can differ in comparison with
the Dutch. Cultural difference, along with changes of the market, can provide a gap,
which will help migrant entrepreneurs recognize the opportunity. Moreover, native
culture or native market can influence other factors and create a competitive
advantage in the ORP.
While native entrepreneurs usually borrow their starting capital from the bank,
migrant entrepreneurs are less likely to receive bank funding than native
entrepreneurs, and therefore often borrow capital from family or other people from
their networking (Nijkamp, Sahin and Baycan-Levent, 2009).
Summing up, there are some other factors, which influence the ORP, for example,
Sigrist (1999) looks at the cognitive processes involved in the opportunity recognition
process. De Koning (1999) and Hills (1997) on the social study network context. In
addition, some other factors can be recognized during interviews. As the main aim of
the current research is to understand, which factors influence the migrant’s ORP and,
whether the ORP in general differs the migrant’s ORP, only main and fundamental
factors will be added to the final model.
Dutch market situation and conditions
Dutch market can be considered to be one of the most interesting and competitive,
due to the availability of legal conditions, taxes and rules, there are no high barriers to
enter markets. Of course, markets with monopoly or some other unique markets are
not taken into consideration. In addition, the Dutch culture and informal institutions
are friendly and supportive. Mainly, all Dutch people speak two or even more
languages, which provides migrant entrepreneurs with an opportunity to start their
own business on the Dutch market, without having language barriers.
According to a study by Kloosterman, van der Leun, and Rath (2002), migrants in the
Netherlands have found themselves in a rather marginalized position. In 1986, 11,500
firms in the Netherlands were run by migrant entrepreneurs. This number has doubled
in 1992 and tripled to 34,561 in 1997. The lack of financial capital and also
appropriate human capital (educational qualifications) led migrant entrepreneurs to set
up shops in markets with low barriers of entry in terms of capital outlays and required
21
educational qualifications. In the Netherlands about three out of five migrant
entrepreneurs have set up shops in wholesale, retailing or restaurants. Kloosterman,
van der Leun, and Rath (2002) explain the success of entrepreneurs in general and
that of migrants in particular by the concept of ‘mixed embeddedness’, which refers
to encompassing the crucial interplay between the social, economic and institutional
context. This concept of mixed embeddedness refers to the complex way in which
migrant businesses are inserted, on the one hand, in the specific Dutch socioeconomic and institutional context and, on the other, immigrant contexts and which
involves diverse configurations of financial, human, and social capital. According to
this view, the rise of migrant entrepreneurship is, theoretically, primarily located at
the intersection of changes in socio-cultural frameworks on the one side and
transformation processes in urban economies on the other (Kloosterman, van der
Leun, and Rath, 2002). The small outlays of capital and the relatively low educational
qualifications constitute a crucial component in this mixed embeddedness. This mixed
embeddedness is the main feature of migrant entrepreneurship in the Netherlands.
Of course, migrant entrepreneurs differ from local entrepreneurs, not only from a
business perspective and in the ways of serving clients, but also in their approach to
the opportunity recognition process and innovations.
Here is an example, which can illustrate the difference of approaches between migrant
entrepreneurs and local entrepreneurs. In the Netherlands, this type of very smallscale (mostly take-away) restaurants is declining, partly because of the competition by
McDonald’s and other hamburger chains. Dutch entrepreneurs are quitting the snackbar businesses, but immigrants (especially Turks and Egyptians) are on the increase
(Kloostermaan, 2010).
Once more, this example underlines the difference in the ORPs between migrant
entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in general. Still, migrants have one sufficient
advantage: they see the gap between their native country and country, where they
migrated. They see the same things in a different way and it helps them to recognize
unique ideas and create something new.
22
In the article of Kloostermaan (2010) there is an example of migrant, who found an
opportunity, which occurred in rather unexpected way. Take Yalc ̧ in Cihangir, a
young Kurdish immigrant from Turkey instead of continuing along beaten tracks and
become just another bicycle repair man, sensed new opportunities and started making
cargo tricycles and cargo bicycles designed to carry children through the crowded
streets and small alleys.
A closer look at how his business is organized, confirms the extensive literature on
the social embeddedness that shows how immigrants, in many cases lacking in
financial capital, are nevertheless capable of starting business by relying on their
social capital (Kloostermaan, 2010). Two brothers have (low-paid) jobs in his small
factory, his sister-in-law runs the shop and his family from Turkey offered financial
help at an early stage when he nearly broke. Cihangir evidently benefits from being
embedded in a network of close social relations and family ties. This network, on the
one hand, offers the right resources and, on the other, shapes the goals.
Amsterdam, with its particular spatial morphology and its large population of well-todo urbanites, offers the right kind of local consumer market to sell carrier bikes. In
addition, the local regulatory environment allows the starting of such a manufacturing
business in the city center (Kloosterman, 2010).
On the whole, the Dutch market is relevant example, which provides migrant
entrepreneurs with opportunities to start business. Informal systems provide a friendly
environment, which is supportive and accepts all kinds of start-ups, from a shop, to
cargo bikes. Thus, migrant entrepreneurs have all needed conditions for the ORP.
Model
For current research, a new model was created. Based on a chapter II – literature
analysis, some of the factors were rejected and some of them were supposed to have
influence on the migrant’s ORP. In many articles there were found no models, which
fit the topic of current research. The model consists factors which influence the ORP
for Migrant entrepreneurs on the Dutch Market.
23
Factors
Social:
•
•
Networking
Culture
Personal:
•
Optimism
•
Self-confidence
•
Risk-taking
•
Ambitions
Prior Knowledge:
•
Type of prior knowledge
•
Previous experience
Other:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Dutch markets
ORP
Venture creation by
migrant entrepreneurs
Age
Gender
Level of education
Place of living
Country of birth
Reasons for migration
24
CHAPTER III – Methodology
To find the answer on the central question of current research paper, case study with a
qualitative method of semi-structured interviews fits better, than others. First of all,
sample group is not broad enough to get a free access to use the quantitative methods.
Qualitative research builds on the flexibility of the researcher and gives room to
analyze the data in the way he wants to.
The central questioning of this inquiry is based on an inductive, bottom-up approach
towards answering questions of how and why. Under such premises, it is an accepted
practice to use exploratory research (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2009). Casestudy based approach to data gathering is a widely accepted and useful practice to
answering questions of how and why (Yin, 2008).
Case-study is an empirical method of systematic, in-depth data collection through
detailed examination of a particular setting, event, organization, person etc. aimed at
understanding that particular phenomenon, or subject, or function (Berg, 2009). Case
study research can be qualitative, quantitative or a combination of both (Yin, 2008).
Berg (2009) suggests that a case study can be of three general types, serving various
research needs: intrinsic, instrumental and collective case studies. Intrinsic case
studies are used for illustrating a peculiarity, or when a research is concerned with a
very particular case. Instrumental case studies are used to offer an extra insight into a
phenomenon or to make a theoretical development more generalizable. Collective
case studies use several sub-cases all aimed at providing insight into a certain broader
context and within such definitions we propose the collective case-study method, also
referred to as multiple-case study method (Yin, 2003).
As it is known, case studies can be: qualitative, quantitative, mixed and etc. For
current research a qualitative method is chosen. Also, to collect the data for a case
study, many instruments are available, such as: interviews, document analysis, survey,
or their combination. Interviews are chosen as the main method for collecting data. So,
the case study with a qualitative interview method is used for the current research.
25
With only 10 case studies on various migrant the theory available does not cover vital
intricacies of the field, therefore existing literature will be used as support; however,
further theoretical assumptions are to be drawn.
This chapter consist of 6 main topics: Sample, Case selection, Research instruments,
Data collection, Interview procedure and Data analysis. All this steps are described in
this chapter. In addition, there will be a step: results and discussion, which are
presented in subsequent section.
Sample
The sample consists of entrepreneurs, who started their own business. Migrant
entrepreneurs, which had or have their own business on the Dutch market. The size
for my survey should be at least 10 migrant entrepreneurs. Migrant entrepreneur – is
an entrepreneur, who wasn’t born in Holland, but moved to the Netherlands and
started his own business or a start-up. The motivation for coming to the Netherlands is
not really important.
There is no difference between, which market is chosen for their business, what is
their age or gender. The only criteria is a venture, created on the Dutch market.
To get access to the entrepreneurs, personal networking, Facebook and special
migrant communities in Amsterdam, were used. After first interviews, the networking
of interview participants were also used for help.
Case selection
Cases were selected using the “theoretical replication logic” to produce contrasting
results (Yin, 2003). Based on this principle, the balance between consistency and
variation should be found. That is why, cases are chosen to have certain migrant
entrepreneurship features, but also included sufficient contextual and structural
diversity. In other words, to get as much sufficient data as possible, All cases are
selected, keeping in mind, that only migrant entrepreneurs are needed, which provides
the data with in common features, but still, tries to cover all ages, genders,
nationalities and different markets, level of education and etc.
26
Research instruments and procedures
The main research aim of the study will be: refining the theory in order to explore
some new information, to fill the gap in the existing theories and to understand
behavior and advantages or disadvantages of migrant entrepreneurs.
The main method for collecting data will be qualitative method, such as semistructured interview.
Data collection
As suggested by Yin (2003) case data should ideally be collected from multiple
sources. Following interview confirmations of each participant, secondary data on the
situation on current markets was collected from open online sources. Secondary data
was then analyzed to gain understanding of the market. Secondary data further aided
in tailoring the interview protocol to each specific case, and providing a background
for subsequent analysis.
Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted balancing maximum allowed
variation sampling and sapling adequacy (data saturation). Interviews were conducted
by one researcher and either one or two participant interviewees at one time.
Immediately following an interview the researcher recorded certain notes or thoughts
on the subject which were later incorporated as hyperlinks to interview transcripts.
Interview procedure
All interviews were collected, using the following steps:
1. Test Interview (3 interviews were used to test the questions)
2. Selection of cases (initial secondary data collection).
3. Preliminary contact with possible interview subjects + Interview confirmation.
4. Primary data collection (semi-structured interviews).
5. Organizing data into notes and transcripts.
After all the interviews took place and the needed data was collected, it was analyzed.
Data analysis
Data analysis in qualitative research means that one have to read, encode and interpret
all information. For data analysis, the key data analysis processes will be used: coding.
27
Coding is an interpretive technique that organizes the data. In coding, interview data
is broken into interpretable segments and compared. Each segment was labeled with a
code, which were needed to structure all the information and make a further analysis
and make conclusions.
28
CHAPTER IV – Results
The study examines factors, which influence opportunity recognition process of
migrant entrepreneurs on the Dutch market. For further exploration of this
phenomenon, supporting questions mentioned earlier as an addition to the central
question, shall be elaborated upon. To aid this endeavor, 10 in-depth interviews were
conducted, analyzed, and discussed in detail.
Participant’s overview
Overall 10 migrant entrepreneurs participated in this research and since some of the
participants wished to remain anonymous, names and company details will not be
detailed.
All entrepreneurs in this study came to the Netherlands from different countries,
mainly from Easter-Europe and such countries as Ukraine, Romania, Lithuania,
Russia and Africa, especially Ghana. All have or had their business on the Dutch
market. Three out of ten entrepreneurs were woman, and the rest were man. The study
participants come from a variety of age ranges, with five participants under the age of
25, three entrepreneurs are between 25-35 years, and two entrepreneurs were over 35
years old. The industries of their start-ups range from Health care, to Seafood through
Entertainment and other. Two out of ten cases are unsuccessful, whether 8 are still
active. All the cases are mainly small and rarely medium size. All of the cases are
profit-organizations.
Of the ten participants seven came to the Netherlands to study, one to start their own
business, one to visit family and friends, and one came because of their marriage to a
native Dutch.
Nine out of ten interviews were recorded during face-to-face sessions, while only one
interview was taken by Skype.
All entrepreneurs provided all the needed information, to analyze which factors
influence the opportunity recognition process for migrant entrepreneurs on the Dutch
market and asked to share the results of the thesis with them.
29
To sum-up the participant’s overview part, a summary table 1 is presented below:
№
Age
1
35
F
Bachelor
Country of
birth
Portugal
2
23
M
Masters
Russia
3
25
M
Bachelor
Ghana
Health
care, website
4
23
M
Bachelor
Romania
5
24
M
Masters
6
33
M
7
41
8
Gender Education
Industry
Age of the
venture
2 months
Segment
About 4
months
(doesn't
exist now)
6 months
B2C
Bike
repair
1 year
B2C
Russia
Sea-food
6 months
B2B
Bachelor
Ghana
2 years
B2B
F
HBO
Ukraine
8 years
B2B
24
M
Masters
Russia
Music,
Managem
ent,
Entertain
ment
Music,
Managem
ent,
Entertain
ment
Art,
entertainm
ent, website
About 1
month
(doesn't
exist now)
B2C
9
23
M
High
school
Lithuanian
Service,
electricity,
repair
1 year and
6 months
B2C
10
25
F
Masters
Lithuanian
Skin care,
cosmetics,
web-site
6 months
B2C
Haircut
saloon
Printing
shop, website
B2C
B2B
Table 1. Participant’s overview due to age, gender, level of education, country of
birth, industry, age of the venture and business segment.
30
Summing the table 1 up, five out of ten entrepreneurs are younger than 25 and only
two entrepreneurs are elder, than 35. 70% of entrepreneurs are male, and 30% are
female. Six out of ten cases work in B2C – segment and only four out of ten
entrepreneurs have started their venture more, than one year ago, mainly, they all
have start-ups. Finally, all entrepreneurs are mainly from European (mainly, Western
European) countries, from Russia and from African countries (Ghana).
Data analysis
The data was collected qualitatively through a self-structured interview, provided with
all needed information, to get the answer for additional questions, which support the
central question.
During the interviews, all the factors were tested and the results will be depicted
during the next sub-chapters. Still, the results part will be started from two
fundamental factors for OPR, such as networking and prior knowledge.
Also, while interviews, some additional factors were tested and some new were found
during the process of collecting the data.
Networking
Networking is considered to be one of the most important factors not only for the
opportunity recognition process, but also for opportunity development process,
starting the business, legal processes, etc. “I just came here, meet one holland guy,
fixed him the laptop, changed the screen and he said: you can just open your own firm
here, just take a KVK number, register your BSN number and let's do it”.
In reference to networking as a factor for an opportunity recognition process, it’s
needed to mention one more time, that there are two main types of networking: strong
ties (close friends, family, etc.) and weak ties (random people, mates, group members
and etc.) Both, strong ties and weak ties were tested during the case studies.
First of all, in just two out of ten case studies, networking had no impact on the
opportunity recognition process, while five out of ten participants found ideas due to
networking. As for the last three cases, the opportunity recognition process was linked
31
both with prior knowledge and the help of networking. All this cases will be shown
below in Matrix 1.
Weak ties were supposed to provide entrepreneurs with an opportunity to recognize
more opportunities for business, than people, who have less weak ties. This
hypothesis was tested during the case studies and it was found out, that people, with
more weak ties, who try to communicate with a lot of people, see more opportunities
for business, than entrepreneurs who lack weak ties. “Communicating with people,
which know, what are they doing. Communicating with a friend of mine, who is purely
a friend, and he has degree in medicine, and we just came out to party a lot for
festivals in Amsterdam and we were talking also a lit bit about business and he told
me about the problems in the health industry”
Thus, 4 out of 5 entrepreneurs, who already have their start-ups are looking for new
opportunities. Some of the entrepreneurs are developing new ideas, which were found
after the current idea and mainly, through the communication with people from weak
ties.
While weak ties are needed mainly for the quantity of the ideas, strong ties, are
supposed to help with the quality of the idea.
Two ideas, found through weak ties were unsuccessful, while other ideas, which were
discussed with people from strong ties, such as: family, close friends, and significant
others are successful and growing from day to day.
In other words, after founding an opportunity through networking, five out of ten
entrepreneurs discussed their idea with part of the networking with strong ties and
received the necessary feedback. “I talked with many clients. With people, who had
their own business, to understand about if the location and the idea is good.” Even
those entrepreneurs, who found their idea without any help of their networking, tried
to get a feedback, which can help them to improve the idea. “[Did you discuss your
idea with someone?] Yes, with a lot of people: my friend, family, boyfriend, business
network. But honestly, I asked them to give an advice, or to stay silent. I didn't want
them criticize my idea. But I don't believe, that some person can know the future.”
32
Strong ties helped entrepreneurs to develop the idea of the business and to start it
faster, than they could do it by themselves.
In reference that, networking helped some entrepreneurs with legal regulations, such
as firm registration, opening of a bank account, and etc., some of them used local
friends to understand the market and the customer’s problems better and not to make
mistakes. “I also consulted with my father and his partners in Amsterdam about,
what do better, because they have experience.” But also, local networking helped
with some insights which were recognized by migrant entrepreneurs and, without
knowing this local insights, entrepreneurs couldn’t even know about this opportunity.
Making a very first conclusion about networking, migrant entrepreneurs use the help
of the networking not only to recognize the opportunity, but also to develop it and
answer some specific questions. Also, some ideas were found through the
communication with local people, who know the market, customers and problems,
which provided migrant entrepreneurs with the information needed to see the gap
between two markets and two cultures, which created a fundament for the opportunity
recognition process.
Prior Knowledge
Prior knowledge, along with networking is also considered to be a fundamental part
of this processes. There are different types of prior knowledge, from which the idea
can come and the entrepreneur can realize it.
After ten case-studies, it was found out, that five out of ten ideas came from the prior
knowledge of the customer, two out of ten were ideas from the prior knowledge of
people from the networking and three out of ten ideas were developed with the help of
prior knowledge, but non of the ideas were realized without any prior knowledge.
All the ideas are mainly based on the prior knowledge from three or more fields,
being a combination of prior knowledge from different spheres. Mainly, eight out of
ten ideas, have a background from three different fields of their or friend’s prior
knowledge. One out of ten ideas are based on only two fields of prior knowledge and
only one idea is based on the prior knowledge from the only field.
33
Talking about ten cases, it was found out, that there are five main fields of the prior
knowledge for migrant entrepreneurs on the Dutch market. Main fields of prior
knowledge are: Education, Working experience, Customer and Personal experience
and, knowledge of the Market, which consist of two main parts: knowledge of local
market and native market.
From the table 2, it’s clear, which type (source) of prior knowledge helped
entrepreneurs, to find the idea and recognize an opportunity for their start-up.
Source of prior
Source of prior
Source of prior
Knowledge 1
Knowledge 2
Knowledge 3
Work experience
Education
Native market
1
Friend's prior
Friend's customer
knowledge of the
Work experience
2
experience
local market
Friend's working
Customer's
Education
3
experience
experience
Customer's
4
experience
Work experience
Native market
Personal experience
5
Work experience
Education
Personal experience
6
Personal experience
Local market
Work experience
7
Personal experience
Work experience
Education
8
Friend's prior
knowledge of local
Work experience
9
market
Native market
Customer's experience
Education
10
Table 2. Source of prior knowledge in the opportunity recognition process.
Case study
One of the most important things: migrant entrepreneurs, who had less than three
sources of prior knowledge, started their business, because, they were out of need.
They had no other ways of staying in Holland, due to employment regulations or the
situation in their native country, which is linked.
As for the main types of prior knowledge, it is needed to sum-up, that, in 8 out of 10
cases, working experience helped in the OPR, while 7 out of 8 entrepreneurs used
their own working experience, and only 2 out of 10 cases found their idea without
their prior knowledge from working experience. That is why, working experience is
one of the most important factors for an ORP of migrant entrepreneurs on the Dutch
market.
34
Personal experience and customer experience together can be considered to be the
second main type of prior knowledge, as 7 out of 10 entrepreneurs, used the
knowledge gained, from their customer or personal experience as a foundation for the
ORP.
Top-3 of the main types, which influence on the ORP among migrant entrepreneurs is
closed by the prior knowledge of the market. Six entrepreneurs found their idea,
having their own knowledge of native (3 out of 6) market or local (2 out of 6) market,
while, only 1 case is connected with the friend’s prior knowledge of the local market,
which helped in the ORP.
The last type of prior knowledge, which had any influence on ORP of migrant
entrepreneurs is education. Half of all the cases are based on the knowledge, received
from some form of higher education. It is an interesting factor, and will be analyzed in
greater detail in the next sub-chapter.
So to conclude this section, prior knowledge as a factor plays a basic role in this
process for migrant entrepreneurs. All cases are based on at least one type of prior
knowledge, while, mainly, ideas come from the combination of 3 different types of
prior knowledge. Working experience is the main important type of the prior
knowledge, while, education can be considered as the least important type of prior
knowledge.
Networking and Prior knowledge
After the analysis of these two fundamental factors (networking and prior
knowledge), which provide entrepreneurs with the information needed for an ORP,
it’s needed to find the most important factor, which plays the crucial role in the ORP
for migrant entrepreneurs.
Matrix 1 shows the distribution of all cases, between presence of networking and
prior knowledge in opportunity recognition process.
35
Prior Knowledge
Yes
Yes
No
Networking
No
Matrix 1. Distribution of cases between Prior Knowledge and Networking, as a
fundamental factor of Migrant’s ORP.
From the matrix 1, it is clear, that there are no cases, where ORP isn’t based on
networking or on prior knowledge. Two entrepreneurs (marked with blue color) found
their idea, from their own prior knowledge and without any help from networking.
Two entrepreneurs (marked green) found their opportunity with the help of their
networking, which is founded on the prior knowledge of the friends. This is why the
presence level of prior knowledge is extremely low, while level of networking is high.
The other 6 cases, found an idea with the help of both networking and prior
knowledge factors. In half of cases, the dominant factor was the prior knowledge and
on the other half, networking had more influence on the ORP, than the prior
knowledge.
That is why, it can be conducted, that, mainly, prior knowledge has stronger effect on
the migrant’s ORP, than networking. Sometimes, the ORP is fully based on the prior
knowledge of the migrant entrepreneur, without any use of networking. There are no
cases, where the ORP is based only on networking, that’s why, networking and prior
knowledge are two fundamental factors, where prior knowledge is more important.
36
Personal characteristics
Personal traits of character and characteristics were always tested. It’s considered, that
each entrepreneur has to have concrete and specific traits of character, which make
person a better candidate for entrepreneurship.
As for the current research, there were chosen 5 main personal traits and
characteristics, which were tested: creativity, self-confidence, ambitions, risk-taking
and optimism.
All entrepreneurs had to choose the trait, which influenced them primarily while the
ORP, and which trait had the least influence on ORP. Other traits of character were
considered best or worse, but somewhere in the middle.
Table 3 shows the distribution of traits and characteristics for all entrepreneurs. All
characteristics were divided into three main groups: which are effective and helped
migrant’s to find the opportunity; which have no influence and neutral. Thus, all the
factors are marked with “yes”, “no” or “neutral” in the table 3, due to the answers of
the entrepreneurs.
Case Ambitions Risk-taking Self-confidence Creativity
1
Neutral
No
Yes
Yes
2
Neutral
No
No
Yes
3
Neutral
Yes
Yes
No
4
Neutral
Neutral
Yes
No
5
Neutral
Neutral
No
Yes
6
Yes
No
Yes
Neutral
7
No
Yes
Yes
Neutral
8
Neutral
No
No
Yes
9
Neutral
No
Neutral
Neutral
10
Neutral
No
Yes
Neutral
Table 3. Traits of character and their influence on the migrant’s ORP.
Optimism
Neutral
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Neutral
Neutral
Yes
Yes
Yes
All traits of character are analyzed below in the following sub-chapters.
Creativity
Creativity is considered to be one of the most doubtful traits of character. 4 out of 10
entrepreneurs, said, that, mainly creativity influenced on the ORP, while 2
entrepreneurs, called creativity as the least effective personal trait, which has no
37
influence on ORP and other 4 entrepreneurs said, that creativity is somewhere in the
middle. To illustrate this trait of character, the definitions, provided by entrepreneurs
are used:
Positive influence of creativity: “Creativity was probably an important factor. We
were forced to come up with the idea, we had no experience or a background, from
which we could create smth. The idea came purely, from assuming, what the worlds
wants as a product, so the creativity process was important.”
Creativity is the least important factor: “I wouldn't call creativity as a most important
feature. You can have an idea, which can be not creative, but it will work brilliant.”
In practice, the same as in theory, creativity can’t be explicitly called an important
factor for the migrant’s ORP. But, on the other hand, it can’t be called an unimportant
factor. Whether qualitative method with only 10 case studies turned out to be
insufficient to test this factor, creativity should be tested once more in future research.
Ambitions
As it is seen from the table 2, ambition is considered to be neutral. The majority of
entrepreneur (8 out of 10) said, that ambition is somewhere in the middle. Only 1
entrepreneur figured ambition as an important factor for ORP, and 1 entrepreneur
said, that ambition has no influence on ORP.
“The least would be: ambition, because it's not about being the best, it's about being
good.”
In general, ambitions of entrepreneurs don’t really play any role in opportunity
recognition process and it can be said, that ambition is not a factor for the migrant’s
ORP.
Self-confidence
Self-confidence is considered to be one of the important personal characteristics for
migrant’s ORP. Seven migrant entrepreneurs mentioned, that self-confidence had the
best impact, while they were looking for an opportunity.
38
Only one entrepreneur, said nothing about self-confidence, which is considered to be
neutral and 3 other entrepreneurs mentioned out, that self-confidence has no influence
on ORP.
“Self-confidence: you have to be self-confident in this music, because you will be
presenting your business to people. And if you don’t sound confident about yourself,
you don't know, what you are doing.” Entrepreneurs consider, that confidence isn’t
important: “…when you start this thing you are totally not confident that it’s going to
work. The statistics say you have 20% chance to have business in 5 years, so you cant
be fully confident knowing these facts.”
As it is seen from table 4, where cases number 2,5 and 8 are shown, some common
things and links can be found.
Successful
Selfor not
confidence
2
Masters
Russia
Not
5
Masters
Russia
Yes
8
Masters
Russia
Not
10
Masters
Lithuania
Yes
+
Table 4. Link between self-confidence as a negative factor for ORP and Level of
education, Country of birth and successfulness of the start-up
Case
Level of education
Country of birth
From the table 4 it’s clear that all entrepreneurs who pointed self-confidence as the
least important factor were born in Russia, have the same level of education and 2 out
of 3 of the start-ups were unsuccessful.
Also, the table 4 consists of all entrepreneurs from Russia, all entrepreneurs with the
Masters level of education. It is evident, that not all migrant entrepreneurs with
Master’s level of education point self-confidence as the least important factor for
ORP, thus, it can be concluded, that only migrants from Russia consider selfconfidence as a not important factor and, it can be a cultural feature, which will be
discussed further.
Still, the correlation of factors has to be tested statistically in future researchers. As,
qualitative analysis can’t provide a strong evidence, table 4 creates a hypothesis,
which can be tested later, through the quantitative analysis.
39
Summing it up, self-confidence is an important factor for the migrant’s ORP, which
helps them not only find, but also create and develop ideas, which turned into venture
creation.
Risk-taking
Table 2 shows, that the majority of migrant entrepreneurs (6 out of 10) consider risktaking to be the least important factor for an ORP.
“Risk-taking is the least important. I didn’t worried. I had nothing, what can I risk?
[laughing]”
2 migrant entrepreneurs pointed risk-taking as an important factor for the ORP.
“I think, the most one that helped was risk-taking. Because you can't be afraid of
doing something. Even if it won't work out you can still work on the reception.”
And only 2 entrepreneurs described risk-taking as a neutral factor.
So, making a conclusion, risk-taking is considered to be the least effective factor for
the ORP of migrant entrepreneurs. Risk-taking can be on the contrary to selfconfidence, which means, that, if people are risk-taking, it doesn’t help entrepreneur
in the ORP.
Optimism
Optimism was chosen as the most important factor for ORP in 7 out of 10 cases,
while, 3 other entrepreneurs mentioned optimism as a neutral factor.
“Probably optimism. This something, which is extremely useful, and it also keeps me
going and you can call it a self-confidence in a certain way. If you don't believe, there
is no way it's going to be successful.”
It can be concluded, that optimism is the most important personal characteristic,
which helped migrant entrepreneurs in their opportunity recognition process.
Optimism is the main feature of all migrant entrepreneurs, which help them to see the
best way to solve their problems and to stay in the country. Optimism is linked with
self-confidence and will be analyzed in the following sub-chapter.
40
Correlation and links
During personal interviews, some entrepreneurs mentioned out some links between
different traits of character, such as optimism and self-confidence, and risk-taking
with self-confidence. “The risk-taking and self-confidence can some kind a go handin-hand. I can't be able to take risks if you afraid of some problems.” Due to all
limitations, described further, these correlations can be tested later.
Finally, all personal traits and characteristics which can have influence on the ORP of
migrant entrepreneurs, Risk-Taking is considered to be the least important, Optimism
and self-confidence are considered to be the most important factors, while Creativity
has to be tested once more on more than 10 cases and Ambitions is considered to be
neutral.
Education
Education is considered to be one of the most interesting factors for analysis. During
the case studies, all entrepreneurs were divided into 4 main groups: 4 out of 10
entrepreneurs have a Master’s degree, 4 out of 10 Bachelor’s degree, 1 entrepreneur
had an HBO level of education and only 1 entrepreneur finished only high school.
Mainly, this division can prove the fact, that all entrepreneurs have more or less, the
same probability to recognize opportunities, so, the level of education, can’t become a
factor for ORP itself.
During the analysis, education was concluded to have influence on other factors, so,
this research can create a background for further research of this correlation.
Table 5 below shows the correlation between level of education and such factors as:
reasons for migration, self-confidence, and if the idea was found accidentally or,
through the research.
All the cases were ranged from the highest level of education to the lowest, to show
the difference more vivid.
Case #
Level of
education
Reason for
migration
Accidentally
or research
Selfconfidence
41
2
Masters
To study
Both
No
5
Masters
To study
Both
No
8
Masters
To study
Research
No
10
Masters
To study
Both
Yes
1
Bachelor
To start business
Research
Yes
3
Bachelor
To study
Accidentally
Yes
4
Bachelor
To study
Accidentally
Yes
6
Bachelor
To study
Accidentally
Yes
7
HBO
Marriage
Accidentally
Yes
9
High School
To see family
Accidentally
Neutral
Table 5. Link between level of education and such factors as: reasons for migration,
self-confidence, and if the idea was found accidentally or, through the research.
It can be concluded, that migrants, with degrees, higher than “high school” or “HBO”
migrate to other countries to get the higher degree, which, is probably, valued more,
than local education in the country, from which they came.
Of course, there can be some exceptions, like with case number 1, who has a
Bachelor’s degree and came to the Netherlands to start their own business.
Also, the higher the level of education is, the more information entrepreneurs get, that
is why their approach to looking for an opportunity becomes more fundamental and
scrupulous. Entrepreneurs with higher levels of education, look for opportunities
through research, or, find them accidentally during the research process, while, all
other entrepreneurs, with lower levels of education, find all the ideas accidentally.
Which shows, that, the higher level of education is, the more ideas are found through
the research methods and instruments.
Finally, education is positively correlated with self-confidence. The higher the level
of education is, the less important self-confidence, as a trait of character is. In other
words, entrepreneurs with higher levels of education, get as much information, as
needed to be confident in the idea and to start idea development process and create a
start-up.
It has to be underlined, that education as a factor itself is quite neutral factor and
needs further analysis with a wider sample group. But, still, education is correlated
with other factors, which also have or don’t have an impact on ORP.
42
Level of education has positive correlation with self-confidence, and also has
influence on the reasons for migration and the approach to looking for opportunities:
the higher level of education is, the more research method for ORP is used, instead of
accidentally found ideas.
Finally, the correlation of education and other factors have to be tested statistically in
future research, as, qualitative analysis can’t provide a strong statistical evidence.
Previous experience
During interviews, the influence of previous experience was tested. Only 4
entrepreneurs had an entrepreneurial experience in past, which ultimately gave them
information about all the processes, about some problems during the idea
development and starting the start-up processes, which entrepreneur can come intouch and other spheres of entrepreneurship, which are not connected with the ORP.
Still, 4 out of 10 migrant entrepreneurs were brought-up in entrepreneurial families
and many of them were closely connected with family-business, so, they had some
entrepreneurial experience, which wasn’t received directly, but still, it couldn’t have
left any impact on them. Only 2 migrant entrepreneurs had no entrepreneurial
experience, neither personal, nor received through family ties.
Still, previous experience has no direct influence on opportunity recognition process
of migrant entrepreneurs, as, the entrepreneurial experience is mainly about the
quality of the final idea.
The interesting fact was found out during the analysis of the influence of previous
experience on the opportunity recognition process for the entrepreneurs, who had no
entrepreneurial experience before. Table 6 shows the correlation between
entrepreneurial experience, the idea generation process and the motivation to find the
opportunity for business.
Case #
4
9
Entrepreneurial
experience
No
No
Accidentally found /
Research
Accidentally
Accidentally
Motivation to find an
opportunity
Out of need
Out of need
43
Table 6. Link between lack of any entrepreneurial experience with motivation to find
it and accidentally found or found through the research for migrant entrepreneurs.
Other cases, who had personal or family experience, had mixed methods to find an
opportunity: some of them found it accidentally, some were making a research and
some of them did both. In addition, the motivation to find an opportunity for business
was mainly to “start something own or to be self-employed”, while, only 2 out of 10
entrepreneurs had to find the opportunity, because it was out of need for them, and
this 2 entrepreneurs had no experience at all.
So, personal experience has no influence on opportunity recognition process in
general, but it helps to develop idea and not to repeat some mistakes from the
previous experience. Finally, the lack of experience has some correlation with other
factors. In other words, personal experience, is not a factor for the migrant’s ORP.
Culture
All migrants were brought up in different countries, that is why, they are different and
behave in their personal ways. Cultural features can’t have a direct influence on ORP,
but culture has a huge impact on prior knowledge, networking features, personal traits
of character or even provide entrepreneurs with some special and unique
characteristics, which help them during the ORP.
Mainly, migrants have a great advantage, which local entrepreneurs hardly have: they
can see the gap between two countries, two cultures, which helps them to get extra
information, which has also a direct influence on ORP.
And finally, migrant entrepreneurs, can easily copy and paste ideas from their native
market, if the same idea doesn’t exist on the Dutch market, or, instead, they can be
experts on the Dutch market, while they have competitive problems on their local
market.
All this cultural advantages and disadvantages, which help migrant entrepreneurs to
recognize opportunities will be analyzed below.
44
Native cultural benefits
For this sub-chapter, all the cases will be analyzed one by one, or combined in
relevant groups, to show unique cultural features, which help migrant entrepreneurs
not only to find an opportunity, but also to create a competitive start-up on the Dutch
market.
Case #1. An entrepreneur from Portugal.
She was brought up in the country, where everyone is addicted to haircuts: “…people
here they don't often go to a hair dresser. In Portugal, they do it all the time to do
their beauty: hair, nails, everything. Also, nail and hair in the same place is very
difficult to find here. In Portugal, everybody does it in the same place”.
This is a case, when migrant entrepreneur is considered to be an expert: “But, it’s in
my favor, as I have qualities, which they don’t have… A lot of Dutch people have sick
hair and they have a lot of difficulties, in finding a good hairdresser. Dutch
hairdressers, I had an experience during talking to clients, I have never come to a
Dutch hairdresser myself. They say, that foreign hairdressers, they are better, than
the Dutch.”
In other words, entrepreneur 1 could have a lack of competitive advantage on her
native market, but here, she is an expert and is having some unique features, which
help her to be more competitive and to create a more successful haircut salon here, in
comparison not only with her native market, but also, with local entrepreneurs on the
Dutch market.
Case #3 and #6. Entrepreneurs from Ghana.
Both of them recognized an opportunity or developed the idea with the help of their
networking.
“…Ghanaians, we can communicate and it's something about charm and charisma,
because in Ghana, every person on the street is a friend. Everyone, so you always
communicate, so you learn to communicate. And also, you get really good leadership
skills.” That’s why, people, who come from Ghana are able to “…to talk to anybody,
networking. You can trust people and talk to anybody. The better the network, the
better it is for a business.”
45
This cultural feature provided entrepreneurs from Ghana to find useful contacts of
local people, who helped them to find an idea or to develop it.
Case #4. Entrepreneur from Romania.
This entrepreneur had to start something own, due to legal employment problems. He
really had last 100 euro on his bank account, when he found an opportunity for
business and his native cultural feature “Not having money. This is really a Romanian
thing. [Really?] Like it's one thing to succeed, being stubborn. Instinct of survival.
But Dutch people don't have this feature.” In other words, this idea was found and
developed into a successful business, as migrant entrepreneur had some cultural
background of, how to survive without having any money.
Case #2, #5 and #8. Entrepreneurs from Russia.
First of all, Russian people can be called creative. “Let me think… I think it's not a
hardworking part, but I think, Russian people are quiet creative…and, we are looking
for more opportunities not in our country, due to some problems, but to start it
somewhere else. It's not our need, but we want to do it.” So, migrants who come from
Russia, try to find some more secure and interesting opportunities, than these, which
can be found on the native market. Also, migrants from Russia gain some other
competitive advantages:“…we have ambitions. Because, growing in the culture,
where you have a huge difference between poor and rich, you always have to live with
the idea, that you have to do everything to achieve only the top, because there is no
middle. This always made me to look for opportunities.”
So, migrants from Russia are more ambitious, than local entrepreneurs and try to find
more opportunities, as they understand, that they can achieve everything, or become
no one, which helps them to be more hard-working, even in ORP.
Case #7. Entrepreneur from Ukraine.
The entrepreneur from Ukraine, can be called to be a representative example, as “The
funny thing, I spent here as much time, as I lived in Ukraine and my childhood
memories. I can’t compare them”. So, it’s hard to get a specific Ukrainian feature,
which helps migrant entrepreneurs to be successful in ORP on the Dutch market.
Case #9 and #10. Entrepreneurs from Lithuania.
46
Both entrepreneurs came from Lithuania, and mentioned 2 different cultural features,
which helped them in ORP and in the process of idea development.
First of all, “He [local friend, who helped to find an opportunity] said to me, there
are no good guys like me [fixing electricity problems], and I'm cheaper, but still do
it better, than local people” and in addition, he mentioned out the other cultural
advantage, which helped him: “Yes. I was poor, I didn't have money, But I like to
work. Here, they are a lit bit lazy, and I'm always enthusiastic, to get work done,
more faster, better. I think, that's the main reason, I still have this business.”
Secondly, talking about other entrepreneur from Lithuania, the difference of markets
became the turning point in ORP. She said: “I was raised in Lithuania, where a lot
more natural. Before we entered the EU, we had natural food, no skin care at all. It
is something which is extremely popular in Lithuania and my home market”. In
other words, she used the knowledge from her native market, which is linked with
traditions and economical situation in Lithuania, as skin-care products are much
expensive, than natural cosmetics.
But still, both entrepreneurs, tell about bad economic conditions, due to which, people
are not communicating a lot, really sad, but still, the same as for Russian migrants,
they don’t have a middle class and that “…parents in my country believe, that their
kids will have a better life, and it's true. In the Netherlands is all around. Optimism
gives a great kick in this situation.”
Finally, migrant entrepreneurs have different advantages, in comparison with local
entrepreneurs, mainly, because of the cultural features, economic situation in their
culture, or just the difference in mentality of people and the difference of market
situations. This features, provide migrant entrepreneurs to see the gap between 2
cultures and to find an opportunity for business, or, they use some personal strong
features, which help them to survive and even to find an opportunity, without having
money at all or just, communicate to right local people, who can provide an
information, which will be turned into a great opportunity for business.
47
Other factors for ORP
In this chapter, some factors, which were not included into the final model were
tested. Also, some other factors were found out during the case study and interviews
with migrant entrepreneurs. All this factors are captured in this chapter and analyzed
below.
Place of living
All the ideas, which were recognized by entrepreneurs, were recognized, while they
were living in big cities. Nine of them lived in Amsterdam, and one migrant
entrepreneur was studying in Groningen. But still, qualitative study doesn’t provide a
researcher with a needed sample group to analyze the influence of this factor on
opportunity recognition process of migrant entrepreneurs on the Dutch market. In
other words, this factor underlines the hypothesis, that, people in big cities, are likely
to find opportunities, but, it can’t be tested, whether they are more or less likely, than
entrepreneurs from other agglomerates.
Entrepreneurship in family
As it has already mentioned, 7 out of 10 entrepreneurs were raised in entrepreneurial
families, that also has a positive influence on opportunity recognition process and on
entrepreneurship in general.
This factor, can’t be considered to be a factor, which influence the opportunity
recognition process for migrant entrepreneurs, because this factor needs a further
analysis, with a usage of quantitative methods and a wider sample group. Still, the
entrepreneurship in family helps migrant entrepreneurs, as they know the process,
know advantages and disadvantages and are more free from risks and more confident,
as they see the real example.
Motivation
Mainly, the majority of people in the 21st century and know about entrepreneurship
are more or less motivated to find an opportunity for their start-up, venture, but still,
there are different types of motivation, to start looking for the ideas for business.
48
During semi-structured interview, all entrepreneurs told the main motivation for the
beginning of the opportunity recognition process.
All motivations can be divided into 4 main groups:
1. Motivation to start something own instead of being employed for someone
else.
2. Motivation to be self-employed, which is connected with two main reasons,
found out during the interviews:
a. Self-employment provides with an opportunity to stay longer in
Holland (get permit)
b. To earn money out of need, while there are legal employment
problems, which don’t allow to be employed, only self-employed.
3. To get the new experience during the studies (special courses, minors, etc.)
4. To create value for the society and to make something new, which is able to
help people.
The collected data showed, that the main motivation for migrant entrepreneurs to find
an opportunity is just a reason to start their own business, instead of working on
somebody else and it was the main motivation for 5 out of 10 entrepreneurs.
3 out of 10 entrepreneurs had legal problems, due to the problems with employment,
as Dutch government has some restrictions for some types of migrants to be
employed. So, the only way, to stay in the Netherlands and to earn money was selfemployment.
And by 1 out of 10 entrepreneur were motivated to create social value and to get
experience during particular course.
So, taking into consideration, that current research is devoted to the factors, which
influence migrant’s ORP, it’s important to mention, that migrant often face problems
with the legal employment system in different countries, that is why, even if migrants
aren’t even thinking of looking for an opportunity, they have to do it, or, in other way,
they will have to return to their native country.
49
In other words, motivation, linked with legal employment problems of migrants can
be a factor for the ORP.
Working status
As it was already mentioned in the prior knowledge block, working experience is one
of the most important types for the ORP of migrant entrepreneurs, while working
status is more specific, than working experience in general.
Working status is considered to have an impact on the ORP and it means, that a
person has to be employed or unemployed at the time, when the idea was found.
Talking about migrant entrepreneurs and taking motivation to look for an opportunity
among migrant entrepreneurs into consideration, it is clear, that, mainly all migrant
entrepreneurs were unemployed at the concrete moment of time, when they
recognized an opportunity. 6 out of 10 entrepreneurs were unemployed, while 4 out of
10 were employed, and only 2 out of 4 were employed and worked in the industry,
which was connected with the future industry of their start-up.
If working experience has a positive impact on migrant’s ORP, working status can be
concluded to be neutral or have no influence on the ORP, as migrant entrepreneurs, in
comparison with general entrepreneurs, have some specific limitations: of time, legal
and etc., that is why, some migrant entrepreneurs start looking for ideas to be selfemployed and can’t even have an opportunity to be employed.
Working status can be considered to be non-efficient factor for the ORP among
migrant entrepreneurs on Dutch market.
Entrepreneurial alertness
Entrepreneurial alertness was tested on a question, if entrepreneurs continued to look
for new opportunities, after they have found the current idea for business, or not, and
also, if they continue to look for the opportunities now.
If the concrete period of time, when the idea was created and found, is tested, than
only 2 entrepreneurs continued looking for new opportunities, while other migrant
entrepreneurs decided to develop the found idea and not to look for something else.
50
That also, as a working status, shows the difference between migrant entrepreneurs
and entrepreneurs in general, as migrant entrepreneurs are limited in time and they
have to develop the first idea, which is considered to be a profitable idea and worth
trying.
Still, if there is no concrete period of time, than 3 more migrant entrepreneurs are
looking for new opportunities now, after they created their first start-up, which
confirms the hypothesis, that entrepreneurial alertness is a factor for ORP. In other
words, the higher entrepreneurial alertness is, the higher the likelihood of an
opportunity being recognized is.
Solo entrepreneur or work in team
Solo entrepreneurs are considered to be more creative, than entrepreneurs, who work
in team, that is why, this factor is analyzed to find out, if entrepreneurs, who work in
team are less creative, than solo entrepreneurs.
Table 7 shows, whether there is any link or correlation between creativity and solo
entrepreneurship or working in team.
Case #
Solo entrepreneur or work in team
Creativity
1
In team
+
2
In team
+
3
In team
4
Alone
5
Alone
+
6
Alone
±
7
Alone
±
8
In team
+
9
In team
±
10
Alone
±
Table 7. Comparison between solo entrepreneurship or work in team with creativity.
5 out of 10 entrepreneurs worked alone and found the idea alone. 3 out of 5
entrepreneurs, who worked alone, consider creativity to be a neutral factor, 1
considers creativity to be an important factor, and the last entrepreneur considers
creativity to have no influence on ORP.
51
Other 5 out of 10 cases of entrepreneurs, who worked in team, show that, 3 out of 5
entrepreneurs in team consider creativity to be an important factor, 1 entrepreneur
considers creativity to be the least important factor and 1 entrepreneur considers
creativity to be neutral.
Making a conclusion from table 7, a hypothesis for future research can be created:
solo entrepreneurship or work in team has correlation with creativity, but, it can’t be
concluded explicitly, which impact solo entrepreneurship or work in team has on the
creativity as a factor for ORP among migrant entrepreneurs.
Dutch market
Dutch market, is considered to be one of the most “friendly” markets, due to people’s
mentality, open-mind, and the level of acceptance to migrant people. Also, the Dutch
government and legal system created an easy system, which allows, almost everyone,
to start something own.
But why migrant entrepreneurs choose the Netherlands? “Netherlands is really
strategic for making an international and domestic business. Amsterdam, has
traditionally been the city, when you start something out and than, you are
expanding”. Also, some entrepreneurs use Dutch market for their ORP, so, they
choose this market deliberately: “Generally, I did know, that Netherlands is a culture
for artists. And this is the place for art and design”, and of course, the Dutch culture
and mentality always help migrant entrepreneurs: “I can tell about the Dutch, that
they are really relaxed. The acceptance level and the level of tolerance is reallyreally high. I never had any problems”.
This chapter describes more detailed: Reasons for migration, Dutch informal and
cultural features, and also describes the legal conditions for migrant entrepreneurs.
Reason for migration
Reason for migration is not considered to be a factor for ORP, but, whether the
Netherlands is considered to be one of the top countries in the world, many migrants,
mainly, from eastern-Europe, Africa, Russia and China, choose this country for their
migration.
52
During the case study, the interviews were taken only from citizens of EasternEurope, Russia, Africa and also western-Europe.
7 out of 10 entrepreneurs migrated to the Netherlands to study and to get education (it
is clear from table 1), which is valued more, than in education in their native country.
Also, studying is considered to be one of the easiest ways to get residence permit and
to receive legal conditions for staying in the country.
The only entrepreneur came to the Netherlands from Portugal, and she has no
problems with documents and she didn’t need any legal background for staying in the
Netherlands, that is why, she is the only person, who migrated just because, she
wanted to start her own business here.
Also, one entrepreneur came to the Netherlands, because, she was married to the
citizen of the Netherlands.
And the last entrepreneur came to the Netherlands to visit his family, who migrated
earlier and decided to stay here, as the economic situation in the Netherlands was
much more better than in his native country Lithuania.
But still, why migrants choose the Netherlands as a country for migration? This subchapter provides an answer for this question.
Local culture
Local culture, along with local rules and legal system, creates some special help,
opportunities and even gives emigrant entrepreneurs to create something, which they
can’t do at their native country.
As for example, entrepreneur from Ghana shows the great advantage of the Dutch
market in comparison with native market:“…My big brother took over [the family
business in Ghana], but we were different. We can talk about anything, but when
you bring out music, he says: “What? What is music gonna bring?”
53
Dutch market creates not only physical opportunities for business and to do, what you
like, Dutch people also help in some informal ways: “On the other hand I also think
that society really accepts you if you start your own business”. And Dutch culture can
even teach some needed traits of character, which can help migrant entrepreneurs in
ORP, such as: “I have a lot of Dutch traits, that I use: speed, directness, there are a
lot of Dutch traits which I hate: individualism, which is good, out of respect, but it’s
bad due to not being flexible”, or “Dutch people taught me with time management”,
and also “They really friendly, but first time they are a lit bit afraid”.
In other words, Dutch culture is a friendly culture, and that is why, local people often
help migrant entrepreneurs not only in ORP, but also, if they face some legal
problems.
Local rules, taxes and legal system
All migrant entrepreneurs considered the Netherlands to be an easy country for
starting a business. “It’s very easy to start a business on the Dutch market from the
regulations’ point of view. The most basic form of biz you can start in about half an
hour and then in one week you get an account and that’s it” or, even “It's a very
organized country, information is available. Half of my time I spent on NY. It's a
whole different game. There are state laws, federal laws. Holland is one of the top
countries to set up business”.
In addition some migrant entrepreneurs figure out some advantages of legal
conditions of the Netherlands: “I even didn't need a license, which in my country, you
can't start nothing without a license”, or “the government makes it really tax
advantageous for you” and also “You can start it online, without any capital”.
Along with advantages, migrant entrepreneurs find also some problems, which they
have to cope with. For example: “you don't have much control over the language and
most of the documents are in Dutch”, some entrepreneurs face up with employment
problems “It was easy as a small business, but there are some problems with hiring
people now. We want to hire some people now”, and, finally “When you have to make
54
your first tax returns, you have to read the entire web-site, and than you get to know,
how it works”.
Making a conclusion, it can be said, that Dutch market created all needed conditions
even for migrant entrepreneurs to start their own business. They created special taxsystem for start-ups, simplified the registration process, as much as possible and all
the needed information can be found online. Of course, there are some problems for
migrant entrepreneurs, especially, if they don’t know Dutch language, as all official
documents, tax returns and other things are written in Dutch.
Final model
To sum-up all the analysis conducted in the current chapter and to create a final
model, which shows which factors influence the ORP of migrant entrepreneurs on the
Dutch market, all sub-questions should be answered and concluded once again.
•
Networking is considered to be one of the most important factors for migrant’s
ORP, along with prior knowledge. But, prior knowledge has more influence
on the ORP, than networking.
•
Working experience is the most important type of prior knowledge, which
gives a needed information for migrant entrepreneurs to recognize
opportunities. Other important types (sources) of prior knowledge are:
customer and personal experience, and knowledge of local or native market.
•
The most important personal traits of character, which influence the ORP are
considered to be optimism and self-confidence, while ambitions and risktaking are the least effective.
•
Creativity, as a factor, has to be tested later on a wider sample group of
migrant entrepreneurs.
•
Culture, can be also called to be a fundamental factor for the migrant’s ORP.
They can distinguish themselves in the country of migration in that industries,
which are highly developed in their native country.
•
Education, place of living, reasons for migration and previous experience were
found out to have no influence on migrant’s ORP, but can correlate with other
factors, which have this influence. In other words, education, place of living,
etc., can be moderators in the process of the ORP.
55
•
Finally, Prior knowledge and Networking can be called fundamental factors,
which influence migrant’s ORP, while previous experience and working status
are considered to be the least important factors for the ORP.
The final model of the current research is the following:
Factors
Social:
•
•
Networking
Native culture
Personal:
•
Optimism
•
Self-confidence
Prior Knowledge:
•
Working experience
•
Personal/ customer
experience
•
Knowledge of market
Other:
•
Dutch markets
ORP
Venture Creation by
migrant entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurial
alertness
Summarizing, the final model should be compared to the first model, which was
based only on theory and literature analysis. First of all, the process of the model
“Factors” – “ORP” – “Venture creation” is the same. In other words, all ventures are
created after the ORP, which is influenced by different factors. Second, in theoretical
model all factors were divided into four main groups: Social, Personal, Prior
Knowledge and Other, which also remained the same after analysis of 10 case studies.
The main difference in two models refers to the concrete factors in main groups of the
model. Main changes occurred to the “Other” group of factors, where the list of 6
factors shortened to the only factor, which was found in the process of the analysis,
so, primarily, this group of factors changed dramatically. The number of factors in the
“Personal” group also decreased from four to two, as “Risk-taking” and “Ambitions”
were concluded to have no influence on the migrant’s ORP. “Prior knowledge” group
of factors became more concrete, due to the type (source) of prior knowledge, which
has more influence on the ORP. But, in the end, “Social” group of factors remained
the same.
56
Summing-up, the final model doesn’t differ from the theoretical model in general and
in the approach to the process and in fundamental groups, which influence the ORP,
while it differs in concrete details, such as factors. The main changes happened with
the “Other” group of factors, but the “Social” group of factors was proved and
remained the same.
During research and analysis, some new factors and new correlations between factors
where found. All this findings will be discussed in the next chapter. Provided the
results outlined in this chapter, the following one proceeds with the discussion,
implications of the findings, and limitations to research.
57
CHAPTER V – Discussion
The main question of current research is devoted to the factors, which influence
migrant’s ORP. This chapter will underline and briefly review most important
findings as well as their implications, connected with migrant’s ORP. The chapter
finishes with limitations of this research as well as suggestions for further academic
inquiry.
Migrant entrepreneurship
Literature analysis provided an image of migrant entrepreneur. Mainly, there is a clear
definition, give in the article (Baycan-Levent et al. 2003). Migrant entrepreneurs are a
heterogeneous group of businessmen and women and may differ in orientation,
motivation and economic performance.
As it was discussed on the second chapter of current research, migrants have different
motivations to look for opportunities for their own business. Theory describes migrant
motivation to be self-employed, mainly, due to their lower education level, their less
favored position as a result of low education and lack of skills.
Also, the creation of firms by migrants is a reaction on other negative factors, such as
job discrimination, language barriers or poorly paid jobs.
During case studies of current research, it was found out, that only 3 out of 10
entrepreneurs had some problems with employment, and legal conditions of staying in
the country, they were from Ghana, Romania and Lithuania. Other cases of migrant
entrepreneurs provide new motivations of being self-employed, instead of employed.
Migrants have a sufficient level of education (bachelor or higher) and were able to
find the job, but, mainly, they all wanted to start their own business, or due to
economic or other problems on their native market, which makes creation of own
business more complicated, than in the Netherlands.
The other discrepancy between theory and practice lays in a theoretical basis, that
migrant entrepreneurs have played a crucial role in increasing the employment
58
opportunities for ethnic segments in the urban population and in resolving social
tensions and problems.
Due to the results, collected through face-to-face interviews, many migrant
entrepreneurs are still doing their business alone, or in team with friends, beloved
once or just some close mates. Some of entrepreneurs hire some local employees and
non of the entrepreneurs, who took part in the analysis, try to create the employment
opportunities for their ethic segment and hire people, just, because, they came from
the same country.
Finally, the last point, which has to be discussed about migrant entrepreneurs in
comparison with general theory, is the fact, that migrant ORP is much more easier,
than ORP in general, as migrants have just to find a market with some demand. In
other words, migrant entrepreneurs have much lower requests.
On one hand, migrant entrepreneurs really suffer the quality of the recognized idea, as
they are limited in time and are not able to make as much time for looking for
outstanding opportunities. Some migrant entrepreneurs even had no money for living,
that is why, they had to find any opportunity for business, otherwise, they could have
real problems. But, on the other hand, the ORP can’t be “easier” or “more
complicated”, than ORP of local entrepreneurs or ORP in general. The only
difference lays in the approach to the recognized idea.
So, making a conclusion, it has to be mentioned, that migrant entrepreneurship is not
studied enough for nowadays. Mainly, researchers studied only low-skilled and loweducated migrant and ethic groups. During current research, 8 out of 10 entrepreneurs
had a bachelor’s or master’s degree, which illustrates them as a highly-skilled and
highly-educated migrants. Their motivations, their approach to ORP and their attitude
to the business differs a lot with the model created in theory.
Migrant entrepreneurs on Dutch market
Talking about the theoretical background and practical findings about migrant
entrepreneurship on the Dutch market, theory provides three main topics to discuss.
59
First of all, theory creates prerequisites, that Dutch market is one of the most growing
markets, from migrant perspective. It is considered, that Dutch market is friendly and
gives migrant entrepreneurs all opportunities needed to start their own business.
Practice shows, that theoretical background is correct. All entrepreneurs considered
the Dutch market to have easy conditions to start personal business.
Secondly, according to a study by Kloosterman, van der Leun, and Rath (2003),
immigrants in the Netherlands have found themselves in a rather marginalized
position. The lack of financial capital and also appropriate human capital (educational
qualifications) led migrant entrepreneurs to set up shops in markets with low barriers
of entry in terms of capital outlays and required educational qualifications. In the
Netherlands about three out of five immigrant entrepreneurs have set up shops in
wholesale, retailing or restaurants.
Looking on 10 cases of migrant entrepreneurs on the Dutch market, it’s needed to say,
that 8 out of 10 entrepreneurs had a sufficient level of education and only 2 out of 10
entrepreneurs suffered financial problems, which proves the fact, that migrants
nowadays are more stable, than they were 11 years ago.
Non of migrant entrepreneurs, who took part in the analysis started their business in
wholesale, retailing or opened a restaurant. 2 out of 10 entrepreneurs entered an
entertainment industry, with medium informal barriers, 1 out of 10 entrepreneurs
started business in a sea-food industry, 3 out of 10 entrepreneurs started an online
business and the least entrepreneurs opened their business in bike, electricity and
other spheres.
In other words, theoretical background, created 11 years ago has a sufficient
discrepancy, due to the fact, that migrant entrepreneurs became higher educated, are
less afraid of barriers and find opportunities in industries they want, instead of they
have to.
60
Still, theoretical background made 11 years ago, can’t follow the latest trends, of
starting business in the internet, or, in other words, online.
Thirdly, in the article of Kloostermaan (2010) there is an example of migrant
entrepreneur, who found an opportunity, which occurred in rather unexpected way.
Take Yalc ̧ in Cihangir, a young Kurdish immigrant from Turkey sensed new
opportunities and started making cargo tricycles and cargo bicycles designed to carry
children through the crowded streets and small alleys.
Analysis of the current research showed, that migrant entrepreneurs are more lucky to
find and create some new and outstanding ideas, which is provided by the wider
knowledge of two markets (native and local) and two cultures (native and local),
giving them more information, and therefore with an ability to see opportunities,
which local entrepreneurs can’t recognize.
In conclusion about the difference in theory and practice about migrant
entrepreneurship on the Dutch market, some key points have to be underlined once
again: the fundamental research made by Kloostermaan in 2002 needs an upgrade, as
it has some differences with the reality in 2013. Many migrant entrepreneurs are
already able (financial and educational prospective) to create something more, than
just a shop or a restaurant and ready to enter markets with barriers and even to
compete with local entrepreneurs. But still, Kloostermaan showed some typical
features of migrant entrepreneurs, which have power even nowadays.
Factors which impact on migrant’s ORP
The last block in discussion chapter is devoted to the main topic of current research,
exactly, to the factors, which influence the ORP of migrant entrepreneurs.
Networking is considered to be a fundamental factor for ORP. Arenius and Clercq,
(2013) found out, that people with more weak ties are more likely to recognize
opportunities, but strong ties provide entrepreneurs with higher quality of
information. Also, Ardichvili and Cardozo (2000) and Ozgen and Baron (2007), see
the link between networking and entrepreneurial alertness.
61
As it was tested, networking was concluded to be a fundamental factor for migrant’s
ORP. Also, there was found a correlation between weak ties and quantity of the ideas,
along with it, the hypothesis about strong ties was also confirmed during the analysis.
There was found no special links between networking and entrepreneurial alertness.
Secondly, research conducted by Ardichvili and Cardozo (2000) create a theoretical
background between entrepreneurial alertness and the ORP. As it was mentioned
above in the previous chapter, EA is verified, as a factor for migrant’s ORP.
Next factor, which was taken from a theoretical background is a prior knowledge.
Shane (Shane, 2000) maintains that any entrepreneur will discover only those
opportunities, related to his or her prior knowledge. In addition, Entrepreneurs can get
this prior knowledge from their personal experience, as a customer, while education,
from other people, during their previous working experience and other sources.
Prior knowledge as a factor for migrant entrepreneurs was approved during the
research, while working experience was considered to be the main type of prior
knowledge. Still, Shane’s theory was confirmed once again, as, 10 out of 10 ideas
were recognized in the fields related to the prior knowledge of entrepreneurs.
In theory, education was still a discussed factor, as Ardichvili and Cardozo (2000)
point out, that education is not an important factor for ORP, while Arenius and Clercq
(2013) support the idea, that the higher level of education is, the more likely the
recognition of an opportunity is.
Due to the results received in the previous chapter, the theory of Ardichvili and
Cardozo is supported more, than the theory of Arenius and Clercq. Education was
concluded to be a non-efficient factor for migrant’s ORP, but still, it showed
correlation with other factors, which influence ORP.
Talking about theoretical background for personal traits of character and
characteristics, researchers created some hypothesis, that Optimism, Ambitions, SelfConfidence, Risk-taking and Creativity are factors, which impact ORP.
62
During the analysis, Ambitions and Risk-taking were determined to have no influence
on ORP, while self-confidence and optimism were confirmed to have a sufficient
influence on the migrant’s ORP.
Creativity in practice, just as in theory is placed into doubt. But, speaking about
migrant’s ORP, creativity can have less influence, due to limitations, which migrant
entrepreneurs have to cope with. In other words, creativity is less important for
migrant entrepreneurs, due to the limitations they have. They mainly think about the
idea, which has to bring money, instead of a creative idea.
Working status, as a factor, found by Arenius and Clercq (2013) and, which was
considered to have influence on ORP, along with Place of living, concluded in the
same article aren’t confirmed in practice, but also not rejected. Place of living is
supposed to have a further research, as all entrepreneurs from case-study lived in big
cities. But, working status is not a factor, more than a factor.
The last factor, found in theory is, that ORP is correlated with genetic factors
(Nicolaou, Shane, Cherkas and Spector, 2009). They tried to find and prove, that ORP
is a genetic factor, in other words, if entrepreneur has someone in family, who was or
is a successful entrepreneur, this can be connected with the success to find a new
opportunity for him.
Case study showed, that 7 out of 10 migrant entrepreneurs were brought up in
entrepreneurial families. This can more or less confirm the theory, but still, it gives a
huge fundament for future tests and future research, to find out, whether
entrepreneurship in family influence migrant’s ORP.
Model
The theoretical model of current research was based on literature analysis and was
created especially for the topic of this thesis, as, previous models were not
representative and couldn’t cover the whole scope of the analysis. In general, the
model was supported by evidence and proved by empirical part of the research.
Meanwhile, the process, described in the theoretical model was absolutely correct.
63
Main difference occurred in concrete factors. The primarily model included 14
efficient factors. The final model consist of eight, while, nine factors were found out
to be unimportant, four factors remained the same, and four new factors were found
out during case studies.
Summing it up, the final model can be used, as a theoretical background for future
research on the same topic of a migrant’s ORP.
Limitations and Future Research
This research is not without limitations. While a degree of care has been taken in
interview selection, data collection and triangulation, ten cases from a plethora of all
existing ones is not a fully representative sample. This research should be viewed
under the prism of qualitative and exploratory method of inquiry that permits to
uncover the overall picture without understanding the phenomenon in all its
intricacies. While it has been attempted to make findings which allow future
researchers to see migrant entrepreneurs in a new way and to replicate current results
in order to make a deeper analysis of other factors, which influence migrant’s ORP.
This research is context dependent and the semi-structured nature of interviews can
also affect reliability of results (Saunders et al. 2009).
Software used during the analysis phase has been found to actually guide the
researcher towards a particular direction of research (Siedel, 1991) and thus analyzing
the same interview transcripts by a different method or a different software package
may yield dissimilar results.
Furthermore, since interview transcripts were not weighted quantitatively the
relationships proposed cannot be statistically tested. Understanding the exact weight
of the proposed relationships is beyond the scope of this paper and is something a
future inquiry may look at in more detail.
Future research is suggested to attempt to replicate present findings; research with
more detail of factors, which influence the migrant’s ORP and links and correlations
between them. As it was found out, some theoretical factors can have no influence on
64
the ORP, but may correlate with other factors, which have influence on ORP:
networking and entrepreneurial alertness, lack of entrepreneurial experience with
other factors, place of living, entrepreneurship in family, as a genetic prerequisite for
a successful ORP.
Also, current research creates a background for further analysis of highly-educated
migrant entrepreneurs, to analyze unsuccessful cases and to study migrant
entrepreneurship in online. In addition, this research can provide an example, which
can be used for analysis of factors influencing ORP on other markets.
65
CHAPTER VI - Conclusion
The present empirical study explored three main topics of migrant entrepreneurship.
First of all, the aim of current study was, to find out, what is migrant entrepreneurship
in general is. The main field of current research is devoted to the question of factors,
which influence migrant’s ORP. And finally, Dutch market, as a market for migrant
entrepreneurship was described from formal and informal sides. In particular the
researched endeavored to learn which factors are considered to be fundamental in the
migrant’s opportunity recognition process. Although central and sub-questions were
tested in past research all the earlier findings attempted to uncover the entrepreneurial
behavior and ORP for migrant entrepreneurs, who are low-educated and related to
minority ethic groups.
Through the literature analysis in the chapter II of current research, it was found out,
that migrant entrepreneurs start their own ventures, as they can’t cope with high
barriers, due to low-level of education and employment problems. Their ORP is
considered to be simple and not as complicated, as the ORP in general. Main factors
are: networking (mainly strong ties), prior knowledge and personal traits of character.
In other words, migrant’s are looking for markets with demand, to earn money needed
for living.
Based on the literature analysis, a theoretical framework was created, which described
the process from factors, influencing migrant’s ORP, to venture creation, as a result of
the ORP.
Through carrying out and analyzing ten independent cases of migrant entrepreneurs
on the Dutch market, fundamental and additional factors, influencing their ORP were
detected. Overall there are two fundamental factors, such as: networking and prior
knowledge, and some additional factors such as: optimism, self-confidence, culture.
Also, education, previous experience, working status, place of living and some other
factors were considered to have no impact on ORP or needed further research. It has
been further found out, that migrant entrepreneurs differ from entrepreneurs in
general, and have some disadvantages: limitation of time for ORP, but also some
66
advantages: have the prior knowledge of native market and see the gap between two
different markets and cultures.
Empirical results of ten case studies, not only listed factors, which influence the ORP
and showed the difference of factors in theory and in practice, but also filled the gap
of a migrant’s ORP in general. The results showed, that migrants are leaving their
native countries to get European education and decide to become self-employed, due
to their personal willing, but not, due to the employment problems and regulations.
Also, migrants in the 21st century start their business online, which reduces their costs
and risks of a failure. Of course, low-educated migrants, which enter a fast-food
market or retail market still exist, but, highly-skilled migrants are becoming more and
more competitive from day-to-day.
While current research provided unique information, which shed some light on
migrant’s entrepreneurship in general and on factors, which influence their ORP in
particular, it can be concluded, that the topic of migrant entrepreneurship is not
studied enough and shows migrant, mainly, from a dark side. While, migrant
entrepreneurship is increasing from year-to-year in some years, migrant entrepreneurs
will be as competitive, as local entrepreneurs. So, future research is required to
replicate, test and uncover new factors, influencing migrant’s opportunity recognition
process.
67
Bibliography
Ardichvili, A., & Cardozo, R. N. (2000). A model of the entrepreneurial opportunity
recognition process. Journal of Enterprising Culture, 8(02), 103-119.
Ardichvili, A., Cardozo, R., & Ray, S. (2003). A theory of entrepreneurial opportunity
identification and development. Journal of Business Venturing, 18(1), 105-123.
Arenius, P., & De Clercq, D. (2013). A network-based approach on opportunity
recognition. Small Business Economics, 24(3), 249-265.
Baycan-Levent, T., & Nijkamp, P. (2009). Characteristics of migrant entrepreneurship
in Europe. Entrepreneurship and regional development, 21(4), 375-397.
Berg, B.L. (2009). Qualitative research methods for the social sciences. Allyn &
Bacon.
Butler, J. E., Doktor, R., & Lins, F. A. (2010). Linking international entrepreneurship
to uncertainty, opportunity discovery, and cognition. Journal of International
Entrepreneurship, 8(2), 121-134.
De Koning, A., & Muzyka, D. (1999). Conceptualizing opportunity recognition as a
socio-cognitive process. Centre for Advanced Studies in Leadership, Stockholm.
Eckhardt, J. T., & Shane, S. A. (2003). Opportunities and entrepreneurship.Journal of
management, 29(3), 333-349.
Gorter, C., Nijkamp, P., & Poot, J. (1998). Crossing borders: Regional and urban
perspectives on international migration. Ashgate Publishing.
Hills, G., Lumpkin, G.T., Singh, R.P., (1997). Opportunity recognition: perceptions
and behaviors of entrepreneurs. Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research. Babson
College, Wellesley, MA, 203–218.
Kirzner, I. M. (1985). Discovery and the capitalist process (pp. 24-5). Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Kloosterman, R. C. (2003). Creating opportunities. Policies aimed at increasing
openings for immigrant entrepreneurs in the Netherlands. Entrepreneurship &
Regional Development, 15(2), 167-181.
Kloosterman, R. C. (2010). Matching opportunities with resources: a framework for
analysing
(migrant)
entrepreneurship
from
a
mixed
embeddedness
perspective. Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 22(1), 25-45.
Kontinen, T., & Ojala, A. (2010). The internationalization of family businesses: a
review of extant research. Journal of Family Business Strategy, 1(2), 97-107.
68
Lehner, O. M., & Kansikas, J. (2012). Opportunity Recognition in Social
Entrepreneurship A Thematic Meta Analysis. Journal of Entrepreneurship, 21(1), 2558.
Nicolaou, N., Shane, S., Cherkas, L., & Spector, T. D. (2009). Opportunity
recognition and the tendency to be an entrepreneur: A bivariate genetics
perspective. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 110(2), 108117.
Nijkamp, P., & Sahin, M. (2009). The Urban Growth Potential of Second-Generation
Migrant Entrepreneurs-A Sectoral Study on Amsterdam (No. 09-026/3). Tinbergen
Institute.
Nijkamp, P., Sahin, M., & BAYCAN‐ LEVENT, T. Ü. Z. I. N. (2009). Migrant
entrepreneurship and new urban economic opportunities: identification of critical
success factors by means of qualitative pattern recognition analysis. Tijdschrift voor
economische en sociale geografie, 101(4), 371-391.
Ozgen, E., & Baron, R. A. (2007). Social sources of information in opportunity
recognition: Effects of mentors, industry networks, and professional forums.Journal
of business venturing, 22(2), 174-192.
Rath, J., & Kloosterman, R. (2003). The Netherlands: a Dutch treat. Immigrant
Entrepreneurs. Venturing Abroad in the Age of Globalisation, Berg, Oxford, 123-46.
Rueda-Armengot, C., & Peris-Ortiz, M. (2012). The emigrant entrepreneur: a
theoretical framework and empirical approximation. International Entrepreneurship
and Management Journal, 8(1), 99-118.
Saunders, M., Lewis, P., & Thornhill, A. (2009). Research methods for business
students 4th edition pearson education limited.
Sechrest, L., & Sidani, S. (1995). Quantitative and qualitative methods:: Is there an
alternative? Evaluation and Program Planning, 18(1), 77-87.
Seidel, J. (1991). Method and Madness in the Application of Computer Technology to
Qualitative Data Analysis. In Fielding, N.G., & Lee, R.M., Using Computers in
Qualitative Research (pp.107- 116). London/Newbury Park/New Delhi: SAGE
Publications.
Sigrist, B. (1999). Entrepreneurial opportunity recognition. In A presentation at the
Annual UIC/AMA symposium at Marketing/Entrepreneurship Interface, SofiaAntipolis, France.
69
Shane, S. (2000). Prior knowledge and the discovery of entrepreneurial
opportunities. Organization science, 11(4), 448-469.
Venkatarman, S. (1997). The distinctive domain of entrepreneurship research: an
editor's perspective. In Advances in Entrepreneurship, Firm Emergence, and Growth.
J. Katz, R. Brockhaus, eds. JAI Press, Greenwich, CT.
Yin, R. (2003) Applications of Case Study Research, SAGE Publications.
Yin, R. (2008). Case study research: design and methods. SAGE Publications, Inc.
70
Appendix 1 – Interview Questions
General block of questions
1. How old are you?
2. What is your highest level of education?
3. What is your country of birth?
4. What is the main reason for migration?
5. Can you describe the core idea of your business?
Block of questions, devoted to the ORP
6. How you found idea and discovered opportunity for your start-up?
7. What do you think, mainly influenced on discovering this opportunity?
8. Were you looking for an opportunity or it came accidentally?
9. What was your motivation to find an opportunity for business?
10. Did you have to find an opportunity, or, you had any alternative ways to stay
in Holland? Maybe you had a job or something else?
11. Have you been looking for an opportunity, after you have found the first one?
Block of questions about networking:
12. Have anyone helped you while you haven't started your venture? With
money, place of living etc.?
13. Have anyone helped you with looking for this opportunity?
14. Did you discuss your idea with someone from your networking? If yes, with
who?
15. Were you looking for this opportunity alone? Or somebody helped you (you
were working in team). With who?
Block of questions about personal characteristics:
16. Which trait of character, do you think, mainly helped you to find an
opportunity and to start your business: Creativity, Self-confidence, Optimism,
Ambitions, Risk-Taking? Can you range them in a list from the most
important to the least? Why?
17. Have somebody from your parents or family started their own ventures or
start-ups? Were they successful?
18. What was your place of living, when you found an opportunity?
Amsterdam
19. Were you employed or unemployed, when you found an opportunity?
71
Block of questions about prior knowledge:
20. What, do you think, helped you mainly to find the opportunity for your
business? I mean, which experience and knowledge helped you to get with
this idea from an opportunity to the normal business? Education, knowledge
of local market, knowledge of native market, customer's experience or
knowledge from your networking?
21. Did you know anything about the market/customers/problems, when you
found an opportunity?
22. Did or do you know anything about:
a. Local traditions/ mentality features/ Dutch language/
b. Local rules, taxes and regulations and legal conditions?
23. Is it easy to start your own business on the Dutch market, through the
government, legal and tax perspective? Did you have any problems with
taxes, policy, rules, rent, local language or not? If yes, do you have them
now?
Final block of questions:
1. Were you an entrepreneur, before coming to the Netherlands?
2. Have you been working before coming to the Netherlands and which sphere?
3. How long have you been staying in the Netherlands, before you found the
opportunity? And, for how long do you live in the Netherlands in total?
4. Does your native culture differs a lot from Dutch?
5. Which cultural features helped you during you start-up?
6. How long did it last between finding an opportunity and starting it?
7. How many employees do you have? Do you have any local employees?
8. How many customers do you have? Do you have returning customers? How
do you communicate with them? Do you try to get a feedback and to improve
your idea?
72