Business and entrepreneurial prior knowledge: Complementary role in opportunity identification

Various theories have established the relationship between the prior knowledge of individuals and the identification of innovation and entrepreneurship opportunities in a firm. The main hypothesis is that individuals cannot recognise every opportunity because they have different knowledge prior. The main purpose of this paper is to shed light on the relationship between different prior knowledge present in individuals, specifically business and entrepreneurial and the identification of opportunities, all under the perspective of the resource-based view theory (RBV) of the firm and through a case study of a Spanish SME. The research aims to show evidence that (1) individuals of a firm identify entrepreneurship opportunities related to their business prior knowledge, and (2) the entrepreneurial prior knowledge of individuals affects the process of identifying opportunities in a firm.