Probabilistic Interpretation of Observer Effect on Entrepreneurial Opportunity

Abstract

Abstract Background: In quantum mechanics, the observer effect categorically states that observing a phenomenon changes it. This research explores a probabilistic interpretation of entrepreneurial opportunity and explains the observer effect reflecting on Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment. This approach addresses opportunity as a “possibility” concept reinterpreting it from multiple observers’ perspectives and the cruciality of action to cause wave function collapse to an emergent reality. This paper intends to resolve the epistemological paradox and ‘opportunity’ war by re-contextualising opportunity as an artefact and positing it as a probability wave with a range of possibilities until alert entrepreneurs act on it. Method: This conceptual development relies on literature review as a research methodology, using reasoning by analogy for the progress of theory and metaphors for theorisation. Results: This conceptual narrative strengthens the epistemological foundation focused on possibility and probability (illustrated through wave function) to sharpen the definition of opportunity and action theory. The observer effect in opportunity is underexplored in entrepreneurial scholarship. This study features how the observer effect influences the evolving state of opportunity. Opportunity is affected by other observers and the entrepreneur’s imagination, social construction and effort. Each involved agent relates and interacts to give rise to possibilities in opportunities. The interrelations and interdependence are complex, giving rise to superposition with a mixed state with many possibilities. Conclusions: The contribution of this research is manifold from a theoretical and practical level. It presents a quantum-like model where an ‘un-acted’ opportunity is in superposition (multiple possibilities emerging simultaneously until it is enacted), expanding on Ramoglou and Tsang’s (2016) view on propensity. The interactional effects – interfering and entangling between agents observing the same opportunity generate possibilities. The potentiality and the many-possibilities states in the opportunity artefact hold great promise in entrepreneurial research.