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This chapter explores how the recognition of opportunities regarding developing technology and entering a new market is influenced by the systemic effect of social forces. These include institutions, social networks and the entrepreneur’s cognitive frames. This study adopts a longitudinal perspective by capturing and analysing the phenomenon in two moments: first, when the businesses started to operate domestically and second, when they began to internationalise. The cases of five Brazilian technology firms are analysed. The findings reveal the systemic and mutually reinforcing effect of these social forces on the recognition of opportunities. The entrepreneurs’ cognitive frames were particularly vital in recognising opportunities to enter the Brazilian market. The institutional support provided by universities along with government mechanisms and entrepreneurs’ social networks were essential to accrue experiential and non-experiential knowledge of international markets, therefore contributing to the recognition of international opportunities. The temporal perspective employed in this research assists the understanding of how historical events shape entrepreneurs’ capabilities to recognise and change company discourse to pursue the recognition of international opportunities. The results provide guidelines for researchers, practitioners and policy-makers, particularly in the emerging economies in Latin America, to support the growth and flourishing of entrepreneurial ventures through pursuing international opportunities.

We explore the acceptance of new contingent work relationships in the United States to reveal an emergent entrepreneurial ideology. Our argument is that these new work relationships represent a new social order not situated in the conglomerates and labor unions of the past, but on a confluence of neo-liberalism and individual action situated in the discourse of entrepreneurialism, employability, and free agency. This new employment relationship, which arose during the economic and social disruptions in the 1970s, defines who belongs inside an organization (and can take part in its benefits) and who must properly remain outside to fend for themselves. More generally, the fusing of entrepreneurship with neo-liberalism has altered not only how we work and where we work but also what we believe is appropriate work and what rewards should accompany it.