An empirical assessment of effectually co-creating market and growth opportunities by corporate entrepreneurs

Abstract

This study empirically establishes by using structural equation modelling that professional financial planners - as products of corporate entrepreneurship - co-create market and growth opportunities through an interaction between effectual networks and value co-creation in a context of uncertainty. A survey was sent to 6000 CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® (CFP®) professionals – experts in financial planning, registered with the Financial Planning Institute (FPI) of Southern Africa.

It contributes to the body of knowledge by intersecting theories of effectuation, entrepreneurial marketing and services sciences at the behavioural practices of professional financial planners. It shifts the academic dialogue from effectual outcomes of products to value co-creation, firms to co-created market opportunities and markets to effectual networks. Effectual networks have been found to mediate the role of value co-creation in co-creating market opportunities – necessary for co-created growth opportunities.

It also makes a methodological contribution by introducing effectuation theory to professional service firms and by providing reliable research instruments to measure behaviours that co-create growth opportunities. Practitioners can use the empirical findings to advance both entrepreneurship teaching and training by using the empirical effectual growth model to co-create market demand and growth opportunities at professional services firms.