History and the Temporality of Entrepreneurial Opportunities.

There is a growing interest in the ways in which entrepreneurship is embedded within, and explained by, the passage of time. Thus, in entrepreneurship, ""Broadening our Sight"" means, among other things, expanding our temporal horizons to increase the historical and temporal sensitivity with which we explain entrepreneurial processes. Unfortunately, however, such historical and temporal sensitivity is not common in the existing research on entrepreneurial opportunities which tends to focus on the nexus between individuals and more-or-less synchronic situations. This lack of emphasis on history and temporality is surprising because opportunities are manifestly about the contrast between the status quo (i.e. the past) and an imagined future which may be realized through present action. In the proposed symposium we adopt the view that entrepreneurial opportunities are best understood in relation to evolving accounts of the past, present, and future. Accordingly, on the one hand, opportunities can be viewed as specific features of broader socio-historical contexts which may be discovered, created, or otherwise actualized by entrepreneurs with consequences for subsequent entrepreneurial activities. On the other hand, entrepreneurs' own prospective and retrospective accounts involving entrepreneurial opportunities may serve a symbolic or rhetorical function which may facilitate subsequent stakeholder enrollment and resource acquisition. The proposed symposium is intended to foster temporal-historical approaches for explaining and studying entrepreneurial opportunities. To do so, we bring together leading scholars with demonstrated expertise on entrepreneurial opportunities, entrepreneurial processes, and the history of entrepreneurship to present their ideas and respond to audience questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]