Amélie Jacquemin

Entrepreneurs using regulation as a source of opportunity: a study combining quantitative and qualitative approaches: Institutions, Behaviors and Outcomes

Few studies investigate to what extent the legal environment might have a positive impact on entrepreneurship. The research presented in this paper aims at understanding who are the entrepreneurs who positively use regulation as a source of business opportunity and how do they succeed in this. We used a research design combining quantitative and qualitative approaches. We first administered a questionnaire among Belgian entrepreneurs and collected 152 valid responses. Then, we identified respondents who reported a positive impact of regulation on their activities and contacted them to realize a qualitative study. We had semi-directive interviews with 8 entrepreneurs and analyzed documents on their firms. The regulations they mentioned in their interviews have also been analyzed. Our findings confirm that not all entrepreneurs use regulation as a source of opportunity. This is explained by a number of factors, i.e. prior knowledge of regulation, entrepreneurial alertness, experiment of regulation, characteristics of the regulation itself, the legal background of the entrepreneur and, finally, the sector in which he or she is active. Regarding the “How?” question, we show that entrepreneurs who use regulation as a source of business opportunities use two different approaches, which we have called the “Kirznerian” and “Schumpterian” approaches.