Abstract: Opportunity, the starting point of entrepreneurship，directly influence the future development of the new business. Opportunity assessment and idea recognition are intrinsically interconnected as entrepreneurs also long for creative ideas; therefore, two dimensions of creativity, usefulness and novelty, could use to evaluate entrepreneurial ideas. However, due to the paradox relationship between these two dimensions, entrepreneurs need to make a trade-off during opportunity assessment. In this paper, we constructed indicators to measure the interaction and balance between novelty and usefulness referring to the bipartite literature. After analyzing data from 224 entrepreneurs, several points were found: in the process of opportunity assessment, there is a substitution effect between novelty and usefulness. At the same time, the equilibrium state of the two has a U-shaped effect on the opportunity evaluation. The more holistic the entrepreneur is, the stronger the U-shaped relationship. The results of this study provide a new perspective for understanding the opportunity assessment process, bridge the field of opportunity identification and idea recognition, in turn, have some implications for entrepreneurs’ decision-making.