Entrepreneurial Opportunity Recognition in a Declining City: Shrewd Choice or Wishful Thinking?

Research on entrepreneurial opportunity recognition has tended to ignore the context variable of place (local city) or to explore opportunity recognition in large, thriving city settings. We describe effects of the declining city on nascent entrepreneurship. We then develop propositions for how the nascent entrepreneur’s sense of the home city’s decline weakens the otherwise positive link between four antecedents and entrepreneurial opportunity recognition. We close with a discussion of universities’ entrepreneurship involvement and collegiate entrepreneurship education in declining cities and describe the Invent Penn State initiative in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Keywords: entrepreneurial opportunity recognition, entrepreneurship in declining cities, entrepreneurship education