  Citation: Barry,P.; Cormican, K.; Browne, S. Great Minds Think Alike, Fools Seldom Differ: An Empirical Analysis of Opportunity Assessment in Technology Entrepreneurs. Sustainability 2022, 14, 49. https:// doi.org/10.3390/su14010049 Academic Editors: Antonio A. Golpe and Mónica Carmona Received: 16 November 2021 Accepted: 20 December 2021 Published: 21 December 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). sustainability Article Great Minds Think Alike, Fools Seldom Differ: An Empirical Analysis of Opportunity Assessment in Technology Entrepreneurs Patrick Barry 1 , Kathryn Cormican 2, * and Sean Browne 1 1 Enterprise Research Centre, School of Engineering, National University of Ireland, H91 HX31 Galway, Ireland; patricbarry@gmail.com (P.B.); debrownes@gmail.com (S.B.) 2 Enterprise Research Centre and LERO—The Irish Software Research Centre, School of Engineering, National University of Ireland, H91 HX31 Galway, Ireland * Correspondence: kathryn.cormican@nuigalway.ie; Tel.: +353-91-493975 Abstract: This study extends the literature on self-employment and entrepreneurship by offering empirical insights into the factors that influence technology entrepreneurs at the early stages of the new venture creation process. Specifically, this research focuses on how technology entrepreneurs assess opportunities at the start of the process. Using data from technology entrepreneurs in Ireland, we analyze differences between part-time entrepreneurs and full-time entrepreneurs and discover that not all entrepreneurs attach importance to activities that were previously considered fundamental. While we confirm that opportunity cost, market assessment, and financial analysis are critical and ever-present, we argue that aspiring technology entrepreneurs must be cognizant that when employment-related costs are included as a dimension of opportunity costs, the level and importance of opportunity costs rise for both part-time and full-time entrepreneurs. We also find that whether nascent entrepreneurs work full-time or part-time on the new venture has an impact on which activities are completed and at what point of the process they are completed. For example, we show that part-time entrepreneurs identify markets earlier than full-time entrepreneurs whereas the opposite is true when it comes to financial data preparation. We argue that a greater understanding of these issues will help technology entrepreneurs to make informed decisions. As a result, our findings may influence an aspiring entrepreneur’s decision to start a new venture. They also have ramifications for investors and support services. Consequently, we discuss theoretical contributions, practical ramifications, and future research possibilities. Keywords: opportunity cost; market assessment; financial analysis; nascent entrepreneurship; incu- bation centers 1. Introduction This research is motivated by a realization that the success of new businesses is crucial to world economies [1,2] as well as the rate at which new businesses emerge annually [3]. There are already many studies on entrepreneurship examining what entrepreneurs do, how they think and how they discover opportunities [4–10]. Additionally, theory suggests that there are several distinct stages in opportunity development—discovery, evaluation and exploitation of ideas [11–14], yet there remains a dearth of empirical studies on factors impacting success in the early stages of the entrepreneurial process. While the importance of exploiting opportunities is unquestionable for any successful venture [15,16], we argue that some type of evaluation is required in the early phases of the entrepreneurial process. This is because whether or not an opportunity is successfully exploited is determined at the evaluation or assessment stage [12,17–19]. Therefore, this research focuses on how entrepreneurs assess opportunities in the early stages of the pro- cess and examines whether traditional evaluation approaches still apply and whether such applications are universal in a real-world context. Furthermore, it examines whether there Sustainability 2022, 14, 49. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14010049 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability