We draw on Searle's philosophy of language to distinguish between “opportunities” as intentional content directed towards a preferred future that entrepreneurs aim to fulfill and opportunities as conditions to be met for their satisfaction. We maintain that studying the former requires adopting a player stance rather than the analyst stance that prevails in the current literature. We build on pragmatist conceptions of truth and imagination to elaborate on the player stance and propose analogical abduction as a mechanism for conceiving and fulfilling “opportunities”. We develop a pragmatist process model of entrepreneurial reasoning that balances the two stances, and derive action principles for entrepreneurs from it.

我们利用 Searle 的语言哲学来区分“机会”作为针对企业家旨在实现的首选未来的有意内容和作为满足条件的机会。我们坚持认为，研究前者需要采取玩家立场，而不是当前文献中盛行的分析师立场。我们以实用主义的真理和想象概念为基础，详细阐述玩家的立场，并提出类比绑架作为构思和实现“机会”的机制。我们开发了一种实用主义的创业推理过程模型，可以平衡这两种立场，并从中推导出企业家的行动原则。