Entrepreneurial alertness plays an important role in the processes of opportunity exploration and exploitation. A central thesis of this dissertation is that opportunity creation requires a certain transformation of an individual entrepreneur's mental schema. A four-dimension structure of the entrepreneurial alertness construct is created, namely juxtaposing, unlearning, prospecting and embellishing. A comprehensive model of entrepreneurial alertness are adopted and tested via structural equation modeling on the basis of survey data from 1080 entrepreneurs in two coastal regions of P. R. China.