DELIVERING ON THE PROMISE OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP BY THINKING BEYOND LIMITING ECONOMICS ASSUMPTIONS: AN EXTENSION OF LEWIS ET AL.’S “A PROMISE NOT (YET) FULFILLED”.

This commentary reframes the entrepreneurship literature’s long-standing emphasis on exploited opportunities by examining why many socially valuable possibilities remain unrealized, particularly those concerning marginalized consumers. Building on Lewis, Bruton, and Shepherd (2026), it argues that structural disadvantage explains persistent market gaps, while reliance on opportunity-discovery theory obscures the central roles of wealth inequality and limited purchasing power in determining which needs can realistically sustain profitable ventures. The authors further contend that treating non-exploitation primarily as a problem of information asymmetry misdiagnoses the challenge, as epistemological divides grounded in lived experience cannot be resolved through awareness alone. Instead, the commentary advances system-level economic interventions and genuinely inclusive entrepreneurial teams as complementary mechanisms for creating and realizing opportunities that foster more equitable forms of capitalism.