This study focuses on recognition of business opportunity and business characteristics identification both in entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship. We hypothesize that using the same mental framework (prototypes) for both entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial business opportunities there will be different recognition patterns among business characteristics. We induced a first entrepreneurial experience, using scenarios, to students with no entrepreneurial background and observed (a) what business characteristics they identified according to the prototypical dimensions and (b) what other business characteristics were identified. We performed a content analysis to participants’ written responses and concluded that there were no differences in recognition for both intrapreneurial and entrepreneurial episodes when they used the business opportunity prototype. On the other hand more business characteristics were identified in the entrepreneurial scenario than in the intrapreneurial one. Finally, participants gave more management suggestions for the intrapreneurial opportunity than to the entrepreneurial one. These results lead us to conclude that individuals with no entrepreneurial experience tend to be more cautious in intrapreneurial episodes, and are less risk averse in entrepreneurial episodes. Our findings can contribute to understand how entrepreneurship may be viewed and taught from the early stages of a student’s education, which

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