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Opportunity recognition and opportunity exploitation are two central concepts in the entrepreneurial process. However, there is a lack of both a clear specification of the content domains of the constructs and valid and reliable multi-item scales for their measurement. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper first reveals existing issues around the definitions and measures relating to the concepts, then defines their content domains, and also proposes scale items to measure the concepts. Four samples are used to develop the measurement instruments.

Two scales are suggested, one to measure opportunity recognition, and other to measure opportunity exploitation. The scales demonstrate reliability and construct, discriminant, and nomological validity.

The resulting instruments provide tools for research and practice that could prove valuable when examining the antecedents and consequences of both opportunity recognition and opportunity exploitation.

Recognizing novel entrepreneurial opportunities arising from a crisis is of paramount importance for firms. Hence, understanding the pivotal factors that facilitate firms in this endeavor holds significant value. This study delves into such factors within a representative empirical context impacted by a crisis, drawing insights from existing literature on opportunity recognition during such tumultuous periods.

The authors conducted a qualitative inspection of 14 Italian firms during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. The authors collected a rich body of multi-source qualitative data, including 34 interviews (with senior managers and entrepreneurs) and secondary data (press releases, videos, web interviews, newspapers, reports and academic articles) in two phases (March–August 2020 and September–December 2020).

The results suggest the existence of a process model of opportunity recognition during crises based on five entrepreneurial influencing factors (entrepreneurial knowledge, entrepreneurial alertness, entrepreneurial proclivity, entrepreneurial personality and entrepreneurial purpose).

Various scholars have highlighted that, in times of crises, it is not easy and indeed very challenging for entrepreneurs to identify novel entrepreneurial opportunities. However, recent research has shown that crises can also positively impact entrepreneurs and their capacity to identify new entrepreneurial opportunities. Given these findings, not much research has analyzed the process by which entrepreneurs identify novel entrepreneurial opportunities during crises. This study shows that some entrepreneurial influencing factors are very important to identify new entrepreneurial opportunities during crises.