Research On The Effect Of Entrepreneurial Alertness On Entrepreneurial Opportunity Identification

Entrepreneurial activity is an important means of economic development and national prosperity. With more and more active entrepreneurial activities, the researches on entrepreneurship field show the trend of increasing depth. As the core concept of entrepreneurial activities, entrepreneurial opportunity is the precondition of entrepreneurship, as well as the key step in entrepreneurial process. Moreover, the entrepreneurial opportunity identification is the beginning of entrepreneurial activity, which plays a decisive role. Therefore, the scholars of the entrepreneurial opportunities begin to focus on the identification of entrepreneurial opportunities. Previous studies have found opportunities identification is affected by a variety of factors, including social networking, entrepreneurial alertness, prior knowledge, personal qualities, and so on. However, the results are more macro, only one of the influential factors on entrepreneurial opportunity identification, and didn’t explore the factor in-depth and the mechanism of the opportunity identification.Based on the theory of Entrepreneurial opportunity and Symbol processing theory, this paper arranged existing research literature, and chose entrepreneurial alertness as the only object of study in order to explore its impact on entrepreneurial opportunity identification further. Through the introduction of Symbol processing theory, entrepreneurial alertness was subdivided into perception alertness, memory alertness, thought alertness, and reaction alertness, and verified in the empirical study. In addition, the paper made a breakdown of entrepreneurial opportunity identification, and tested the impact of entrepreneurial alertness on entrepreneurial opportunity identification.The results showed that perception alertness and memory alertness had a significant positive impact on feasibility of entrepreneurial opportunity identification, and thought alertness was significantly correlated. What’s more, perception alertness and thought alertness had a significant positive impact on profitability of entrepreneurial opportunity identification.On the basis of summarizing research findings, this paper not only explained the theoretical and practical significance, but also pointed out the shortcomings of this study and future research directions, which provided a reference for future academic research and practice of entrepreneurs.