Business Opportunities, Subsidiaries and Interpreneurial Activity

Although the concept of opportunity is frequently used, it is still rather vague. In the introductory chapter it was suggested that ‘opportunities should be studied as some kind of process in which the opportunity is found and realized’ (p. 3) and that business network theory might have something important to say about this. It was also indicated that this concept could be seen as a new and advantageous combination of resources. In this chapter we will discuss how subsidiaries within multinational companies (MNCs) may detect and exploit business opportunities. In order to detect and exploit such opportunities, two antecedent conditions are necessary: specific market knowledge that is novel and relevant to the subsidiary’s technological knowledge, which include both embodied (specific technology such as innovations, production processes, and products) and un-embodied form of knowledge. When these two conditions are fulfilled, a business opportunity might be detected and subsequently exploited. Below, we will further discuss this by drawing on both entrepreneurial theories and business network theories.