Identifying and Prioritizing the criteria for evaluating Entrepreneurial Opportunities in the Insurance Industry

Achieving competitive advantage in insurance industry requires innovation and entrepreneurship. Opportunity identification is the essence and starting point of entrepreneurship. Opportunity evaluation is an essential element in the entrepreneurial process that facilitates the relationship between discovery and exploitation. The purpose of this study is to identify and prioritize the criteria for evaluating entrepreneurial opportunities in the insurance industry.

This research is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-survey in terms of methodology. First, the criteria for evaluating the opportunity extracted from the research literature and were screened by experts using a researcher-made questionnaire and was analyzed by mean test via SPSS software. Then, the weight of the criteria was determined using the best-worst questionnaire via Lingo software. The first statistical population to identify and determine the criteria for evaluating entrepreneurial opportunities was 31 people from university professors and insurance industry experts. The second statistical population to determine the weight of the criteria set out in the previous step, was 8 managers of Parsian insurance company. The face and content validity of the questionnaires was assessed by university professors and industry experts. The reliability of the first questionnaire was confirmed with Cronbach's alpha of 0.841 and the second questionnaire with an incompatibility rate of 0.0274.

The most important criteria for evaluating entrepreneurial opportunities in the insurance industry are project resources, amount of resource investment, market needs, profit margin, level of competition, desirability and attractiveness of the opportunity, other potential opportunities and few barriers for entry.

Insurance companies can make the right decisions about how to take advantage of opportunities by emphasizing the criteria identified in this study, in order to gain a competitive advantage which leads to the growth and development of the country's economy.