Using verbal protocol and conjoint analyses, this study examines how stakeholders assess an organization in deciding whether to provide their support to it. The authors find that stakeholders’ support depends on their perceptions of an organization’s age and other dimensions of newness related to addressing management challenges of adaptation—the entrepreneurial problem, the engineering problem, and the administrative problem. Stakeholder support is more likely for those organizations that are old, cognitively legitimate, affectively congruent, reliable, accountable, and strategically flexible. The authors conclude with theoretical implications for scholars and practical implications for resource acquisition in various contexts of entrepreneurship.

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Opportunity exploitation is a necessary step in creating a successful business in the entrepreneurial process, yet there has been little conceptual and empirical development of this issue in the literature. This study examines the decisions of entrepreneurs to begin exploiting business opportunities from a resource-based view. Our analysis of a sample of entrepreneurs whose businesses are located in incubators suggests that entrepreneurs are more likely to exploit opportunities when they perceive more knowledge of customer demand for the new product, more fully developed necessary technologies, greater managerial capability, and greater stakeholder support. Moreover, the findings of this study shed a light on a less emphasized aspect of the resource-based view: the new product’s anticipated lead time acts as an enhancing moderator in entrepreneurs’ exploitation decision policies. Implications for future research on opportunity exploitation are discussed.

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