Research On The Influence Of Entrepreneurial Team Heterogeneity And Social Network On Opportunity Identification

Entrepreneurship is the growth point of economic development.Identifying opportunities is the premise of starting entrepreneurial activities and creating value.The academic community pays attention to the core link in the early stage of entrepreneurship and regards opportunity recognition as an important research topic in entrepreneurial research.The current opportunity recognition research focuses more on the role of individuals and lacks the combination of entrepreneurial team characteristics and opportunities.Research on the impact of team members' deep characteristics such as personality traits,values,attitudes,preferences and beliefs on opportunities is even more lacking.Social networks are important channels for new businesses to perceive unmet needs in the market and tap potential value.At present,the literature on social network and opportunity relationship pays more attention to the individual level,and the article on the impact of the heterogeneity characteristics of the entrepreneurial team on the corporate social network is also very lacking.At the same time,there is a lack of integration of team heterogeneity,social networks,and corporate opportunity identification into a theoretical framework to explore the path that affects business opportunity identification.This situation leads to the inability to clearly articulate the mechanism of the characteristics of the entrepreneurial team,and the team resources cannot be effectively utilized.Therefore,it is necessary to provide guidance and suggestions for entrepreneurs to utilize team resources and build social networks,thereby enhancing the ability of enterprise opportunity recognition.Based on upper echelons theory,social network theory and entrepreneurial opportunity theory,this paper takes the external heterogeneity and internal heterogeneity of the entrepreneurial team as the independent variables,the corporate social network as the intermediary variable,and the enterprise opportunity recognition as the dependent variable.The article establishes a theoretical model and proposes hypotheses to explore the relationships between variables.The research data of 486 start-ups were obtained through a large sample survey,and the statistical analysis software was used to test the hypotheses.The conclusions of the study are as follows: Corporate opportunity identification is positively influenced by the external heterogeneity of the entrepreneurial team,the internal heterogeneity of theentrepreneurial team,and the corporate social network(including network connections and network centrality).The greater the heterogeneity and internal heterogeneity of the entrepreneurial team,the richer the social network and the stronger the centrality,the better the opportunity recognition effect.The social network as a mediator variable has a partial mediating effect between the external heterogeneity of the entrepreneurial team and the identification of enterprise opportunities,as well as the internal heterogeneity of the entrepreneurial team and the identification of enterprise opportunities.In theory,this paper fills the gaps in current opportunity research and team research,and expounds the role and specific operational mechanism of entrepreneurial team heterogeneity in improving the opportunity recognition effect of enterprises.In practice,this study provides a reference for new ventures to set up entrepreneurial teams and build social networks to enhance the opportunity recognition of new ventures.