Mobilizing social capital to pursue entrepreneurship

To invoke entrepreneurship is to utilize resources to discover, identify and exploit emerging market and technological opportunities. Accounts of the resources vary widely, yet one of the most critical concerns the embeddedness of social capital in the social relations of the entrepreneur. Three factors derived from social relations that create social capital are emphasized: opportunity, motivation and ability. Based on a comparative case study of Trend Micro (an antivirus firm) and TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, a foundry business), this paper shows how access to opportunity, motivation and ability is important to explaining entrepreneurship. It concludes with implications for theory, practice and research.