Entrepreneurship is vital for economic development in emerging economies. Yet entrepreneurs in these contexts continue to face unique challenges such as widespread opportunism fueled by weak institutions and high levels of corruption. While previous studies explored how entrepreneurs navigate these environments, it remains unclear how they strategically manage their visibility to mitigate threats. Using a qualitative phenomenological approach rooted in the entrepreneurship-as-practice perspective and Bourdieu’s theory of practice, we conducted extensive fieldwork in North Africa, shadowing an entrepreneur we refer to as Casper. Our study uncovers three key strategies—concealing, diminishing, and obfuscating—that collectively form a process we theorize as strategic invisibility work. Our theoretical model provides new insights into how entrepreneurs navigate weak institutional environments by strategically managing their visibility to reduce the risk of opportunism. Theoretically, we challenge the Western-centric view that visibility is universally essential for success, showing instead that invisibility can be a strategic advantage. Our findings contribute to the entrepreneurship literature by offering a novel process model of strategic invisibility, expanding our understanding of how entrepreneurs adapt and thrive in highly uncertain and opportunistic contexts.
