Is Luck a Determinant in Achieving Sustainable Entrepreneurial Opportunity?: A Theoretical Perspective

The entrepreneur is the engine of economic growth of a nation. Many individuals aspiring to be entrepreneurs lack the ability to conceive ideas. Although they are motivated and have the financial resources to start-up ventures they are disillusioned as to where and how opportunities are found. The cultural norms of civil society in Sri Lanka being over reliant on astrology, imposing patterns on random data, and luck have an impact on identifying and exploiting entrepreneurial opportunities. There exists a two-world view of the notion of luck that being psychological and philosophical luck, from a psychological perspective this involves the entrepreneurs’ perception of events and people. The philosophical domain focuses on morality and epistemic luck.The purpose of this review is to analyse the importance and role of the phenomenon of luck in identifying entrepreneurial opportunities and its impact on established opportunity identification processes associated with the economic school, cultural cognitive school and the socio-political school. This is achieved by exploring the scope and limitations of the systematic variations in randomness in opportunity identification by adopting a systematic literature review of the established theories of opportunity identification in relation to the psychological and philosophical notion of luck. This study clarifies the misconceptions surrounding the notion of luck in the identification of entrepreneurial opportunities and limitations imposed by the phenomenon of luck in achieving sustainable opportunity identification.