How habitual entrepreneurs engage in opportunity search and recognition

Many successful ventures start with opportunity search and recognition. This is regarded as a major stage in the entrepreneurial process. While 'opportunity' has been a popular area of research for entrepreneurship scholars, not much is known about how habitual entrepreneurs undertake this process. Habitual entrepreneurs are different from novice or other single-venture entrepreneurs primarily because they are involved in multiple businesses. MacMillan (1986) observed that although they continue to own the business, they prefer to employ professional management and then turn and start other ventures. This process is then repeated many times throughout their entrepreneurial careers. Since these habitual entrepreneurs have had the opportunity to learn how to efficiently and swiftly overcome the stumbling blocks they encountered in their first efforts, MacMillan argues they build an 'experience curve' in entrepreneuring. He then issued a challenge that 'to really learn about entrepreneurship, let's study habitual entrepreneurs.'