Opportunity Recognition for Entrepreneurs Based on a Business Model for Sustainability: A Systematic Approach and Its Application in the Dutch Dairy Farming Sector

In this article, a systematic approach is suggested to identify unexplored opportunities and recommend a business model for sustainability for startups. Considering a particular sector, following the proposed approach, an entrepreneur should first determine the importance of the different areas which could be improved in that sector. Then the current performance of these areas is also evaluated. Subsequently, by an importance-performance analysis, an entrepreneur can obtain information on areas that can be improved but that are currently underperforming. These are the areas that can be considered as opportunities with high success rate by the entrepreneurs for being survival. The proposed approach is applied to the case of dairy farming in The Netherlands. Data is collected from a sample of top experts in this field and analyzed using best-worst method and importance-performance analysis. We found that, of the technological, social, and organizational areas in Dutch dairy farming, the social area is the one area where the performance does not reflect its importance. Following the business model for sustainability, the entrepreneurs are advised to adopt archetypes that are suitable for the social area.