A longitudinal study of entrepreneurial firms opportunity recognition and product development management strategies: Implications by firm type

The purpose of this article is to analyze both the opportunity recognition and product development management processes not only among technology firms, but among non‐technology firms as well at two points in time, 1998 and 2003.

The current study included two data sets: a 1998 survey of technology‐based and non‐technology firms located in US incubators; and a new 2003 study of technology and non‐technology based firms in the Inland Northwest. All respondents indicated they considered themselves entrepreneurs.

Findings suggest that the opportunity recognition process changed between 1998 and 2003. Some of the authors' prior work suggested that the process, at least for technology‐based firms, had been similar between 1989 and 1998. Industry changes over time, perhaps different firm types, and insufficient data could be rational reasons for the changes. Thus, as far as the opportunity recognition process then, there is evidence that suggests that the process is different for manufacturing and non‐manufacturing firms.

The study of management and marketing processes should be performed by industry or business type over time. The researcher should consider that if the opportunity recognition or product development management processes reflect the changing nature of entrepreneurship over time, then characterizing those processes as constant models is inappropriate.

The overall results are consistent with other research studies and serve to further substantiate the use of single industry data. An “equation of state” for an opportunity recognition model or a product development management model is suggested by the empirical results reported on in the current paper as well as the diversity of other researchers' work.