The Effect of Culture on Opportunity Recognition: A Qualitative Study of Immigrant and Native-Born Entrepreneurs

Recent research has highlighted the effect of culture on the decisions entrepreneurs make and the behaviours they exhibit. Building on this research stream, we suggest that a comparison of native-born and immigrant entrepreneurs is a rich setting in which to study the effect of culture on entrepreneurship in general and opportunity recognition in particular. Using the qualitative analysis method of matched pairs of seven immigrant and seven native-born entrepreneurs, this exploratory study reveals that immigrant entrepreneurs have a higher tendency to recognize entrepreneurial opportunities through the opportunity discovery process rather than the opportunity creation process.