Shahab Zare - Ph.D. student of Innovation Management Institute of Management, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Piazza Martiri della Liberta , ۳۳, ۵۶۱۲۷ Pisa, Italy,
Andrea Piccaluga - Professor of Innovation ManagementInstitute of Management, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Piazza Martiri della Liberta , ۳۳, ۵۶۱۲۷ Pisa, Italy,
Alberto Di Minin - Professor of Innovation ManagementInstitute of Management, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Piazza Martiri della Liberta , ۳۳, ۵۶۱۲۷ Pisa, Italy,

The entrepreneurship literature has vastly focused on the antecedents and drivers toward recognizing opportunities [1] for the individuals. There are also ongoing studies regarding the sources of knowledge for the venture creation and scholars put these sources into three categories of entrepreneurship namely as user entrepreneurship , academic entrepreneurship , and employee entrepreneurship [2]. However, there is no study aiming to answer how these knowledge sources of entrepreneurship identify opportunities on the basis of their unique process of becoming entrepreneurs and creating ventures. Theories of opportunity identification are codified into two schools of thoughts resulting in two different principles and framework. The opportunity creation theory refers to the subjective nature of opportunities while the opportunity discovery theory focuses on the objectivity of the opportunities. Our theoretical study collects literature on these separate phenomena. It coincides the theories with the different typologies of entrepreneurship on the basis of their knowledge sources and provides propositions regarding this scholarship.

Opportunity identification, User Entrepreneurship, Academic Entrepreneurship, Employee Entrepreneurship, Sources of Knowledge