Recent research in the field of international entrepreneurship (IE) has emphasized the concept of international opportunity. The entrepreneurial behaviors focused on international opportunities have been found to be critical in IE. International opportunities, however, are often depicted in rather abstract and unspecified ways, and the research suffers from narrow theoretical discussion in relation to the concept of opportunity. To address these issues, the authors draw from entrepreneurship research and present alternative conceptualizations of opportunities as a basis for more in-depth study of international opportunities in IE. To further articulate a future research agenda, the authors review the state of knowledge on opportunities in the IE field by contentanalyzing articles published between 1989 and 2012. All the analyzed articles incorporate the concept of opportunity into their studies. It is found that, although the IE research has investigated many relevant elements, it is rather limited in the articulation of the conceptual features of international opportunities and opportunity-focused behaviors. Building on these observations, the authors propose a definition of international opportunity and research questions and strategies to advance IE research on international opportunities.

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Opportunity discovery, Entrepreneurial behaviour, International joint venture, Process,

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Opportunity discovery process is one of the main topics of interest in entrepreneurship research. However, the effects of opportunity discovery strategies of entrepreneurs on performance of new ventures have been neglected. The reason for this appears to be the claim that opportunity discovery as behaviour of entrepreneurs takes place before the venture is established and, thus, should not be connected to the later phases of the entrepreneurial process. This is not an established consideration as it inherently holds the idea that research should study how entrepreneurs create value which should not be connected to the value they have created. The present study examined how opportunity discovery strategies of entrepreneurs affect performance of the ventures established. The results illustrate that the performance of new ventures is strongly influenced by opportunity discovery strategies used by entrepreneurs. More specifically, growth of new ventures showed significant increase by proactive opportunity discovery strategy. In addition, the opportunity discovery strategies of proactive searching, competitive scanning and collective action increased the newness value of the ventures. These results suggest that the strategies entrepreneurs use to discover opportunities have much impact on creating high performance levels of new ventures.