Phenomenological interpretation of the nature of entrepreneurial opportunities based on lived experiences of entrepreneurs in healthcare business context

The entrepreneurship is predominantly described as a process involves the nexus of two phenomena: ‘the presence of lucrative opportunities and the presence of individuals who create these opportunities. This framework has directed the scholarly domain of entrepreneurship by the way of focusing on the interplay between entrepreneurial opportunities and the individuals who discover, conceive, create or pursue those opportunities. However, the field of entrepreneurship has faced with disagreement over the ‘nature of the construct of entrepreneurial opportunities. Generally, there have been two different ontological approaches of realism and subjectivism about this construct. From the practical perspective, during recent decades there has been an on-going debate in developing countries regarding the healthcare industry as a leverage for national and international development. The healthcare industry is currently among those thriving areas of entrepreneurship in Iran as a developing economy. The review of academic literature in healthcare context indicated that few studies focused exclusively on the entrepreneurship in this context. Mainly, the existence of business opportunities which are highly reliant upon the entrepreneurs has been neglected in this field. Present research fills this gap in the literature by interpreting the nature of entrepreneurship in the healthcare context on the basis of the intersubjective meanings comes from the articulation of the entrepreneurs about their interaction in shaping the nature of their surrounding business environment. Such an interpretation achieves by applying qualitative contextualize methodology of the hermeneutical phenomenology. Hermeneutical interpretation of entrepreneurial opportunity simultaneously entails the lived experiences of entrepreneurs in earning their livelihood, along with their interaction with the environment, and the pre-existence and independence nature of opportunity which is embedded in the economic, historical ,sociocultural context.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Reviewing the theoretical foundation of entrepreneurship indicated that significant progress has been made in the last few decades about the theoretical construction of entrepreneurial opportunities. However, the field of entrepreneurship has faced with a disagreement over the ‘nature of the entrepreneurial opportunities. Generally, there have been two different ontological approaches to this construct. The first is the realist position which assumes the opportunities as the reality formed by exogenous shocks in the pre-existing environment, waiting to be discovered by the conscious entrepreneurs. The second is the subjective position which assumes it as the social construction which is endogenously enacted by the creative imaginations perceptions and activities of the entrepreneurs.  Both of these alternative views approve the importance of entrepreneurial opportunity in entrepreneurship and both have provided considerable knowledge about the nature of this concept.

The qualitative methodology of interpretive hermeneutic phenomenology was selected to gain a deeper understanding of participant’s lived experiences in the context of healthcare entrepreneurship. The study designed in both research design and analysis based on the principles of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). It’s an appropriate way to explore the personal, interpersonal and sociocultural participants' perceptions. Research sample included 13 entrepreneurs from healthcare enterprises in the pharmaceutical, medical devices, medical biotechnology, smart health context, besides 3 health policy makers which were interviewed using semi-structured interviews. 

The findings emerged from the interviews consist of 642 meaning units, 489 clusters of meaning, 56 master-themes, 16 meta-themes, and finally 5 overall themes which indicate the nature of entrepreneurial opportunities in healthcare context. The five final themes are: (1) the perceptional pre-structures of individual; (2) the environmental empowerments in macro levels; (3) environmental empowerments in micro levels; (4) the entrepreneur's interactive based on the perceptional pre-structures; (5) the entrepreneur's interactive based environmental empowerments. This study makes several contributions to the understanding of the nature of entrepreneurial opportunities in the healthcare context. First, the findings of this research indicate the value and importance of the technological, sociocultural, juridical and institutional conditions, also, the market structures of the healthcare context of developing countries in the success of the healthcare entrepreneurs. Second, the significance of our findings heightens by the research's focus on the independent and efficient entrepreneurs of healthcare context and their contributions to the emergence and the development of the prominent business opportunities in the healthcare industry. Third, present investigation contains the multiple levels of analysis and explicitly indicated the individual, venture along with relevant macro and micro characteristics of the business environment as the essential parts of the healthcare entrepreneurial opportunities.