The Collision of Indeterminate Environments and Porter's Forces: Uncertainty Fields and Their Impact on Entrepreneurial Alertness

摘要

Advances in data collection and analysis may serve to reduce the role that prior knowledge of a market or industry plays in opportunity recognition, but the question remains as to what data to collect and how to analyze it. While environmental uncertainty has been theorized as an important component in opportunity identification, strategic management education has expounded on industrial economics as a means to detect weaknesses or discontinuities in existing markets. The objective environmental uncertainty can be merged with Porter's Forces to create 'uncertainty fields,' mathematical constructs from which algorithms may be devised to detect exploitable market imperfections.