Designing an Opportunity-Evaluating Model for Software Entrepreneurship in Conditions of Uncertainty: a Fuzzy Approach

Choosing a suitable opportunity in conditions of uncertainty is a common problem for entrepreneurs. The software startup procedure is particularly vulnerable to extreme uncertainty and competition; therefore, analyzing opportunities and threats is critical for software entrepreneurs. Hence, the present study aims to identify the criteria of uncertainty in evaluating entrepreneurial opportunities in technology-driven businesses of the software industry with a fuzzy approach using a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods. The statistical population of the research includes experts in the software industry. In this regard, first, a theoretical basis was obtained by examining the background. Second, we performed semi-structured interviews and extracted and coded 115 phrases. Third, after combining the general and subsidiary phrases, we reached 84 phrases, and by combining similar phrases, we selected 29 phrases. Forth, after categorizing those phrases, we determined the six axes of uncertainty and used the fuzzy Ahp technique and Geometric Buckley averaging in Microsoft Excel to rank those six axes as follows: 1-uncertainty in resources, 2-uncertainty in competition, 3-technological uncertainty, 4-political uncertainty, 5-uncertainty in agents, and 6-customer uncertainty. Finally, the model of evaluating entrepreneurial opportunities in conditions of uncertainty was designed using a fuzzy approach in the software industry.