So,entrepreneurship theory—agreements,criticisms and promises [ aka our tent,our circus,our next act]

SO! happy together

Across these six essays (and even more Authors), it is reassuring that substantive areas of general agreement about ET can be found. While this Forum’s Authors collectively do not represent the full spectrum of opinions, topics, and expertise in our field, there is perhaps a reasonable enough array of perspectives to make this overlap of conceptualizations about ET a healthy sign for its present and future.

We agree that ET is a thing—a legitimate thing—that has made some progress since its inception at least a century ago. To some, that inception might be with Knight (1921), who argued that entrepreneurship was defined by judgment (and action) under uninsurable uncertainty—the original firm-as-theory conceptualization. Furthermore, we agree that ET is an important thing. While its importance depends on how it is defined, there appears to be consensus that ET seeks to study and explain new value creation in the economy, which involves phenomena of very significant impact, depth, diversity, and spillover.

Happily, we all agree that there is a need for field-unique ET, but disagree significantly over its priority and relative quantity. We agree on this because that type of ET would improve the legitimacy and boundaries of the field.

We also appear to agree that applying outside theories to entrepreneurial phenomena (howsoever defined) and calling it entrepreneurship research is welcome as long as those theories are explicitly and substantively modified for this field. Otherwise, they are accurately just applications of another field on a new-to-that-field phenomenon and, arguably, are better published in that field. Relatedly, we seem to agree that the field should not simply be an application area for other disciplines.

Finally, in order to improve ET, we indicate agreement on three things: that making more data available on entrepreneurial phenomena (e.g. with shared, verified databases) will increase their analyses and the quality and diversity of theories offered to explain them; that post-publication assessment—at least for ET that has accumulated attention—is necessary for assessing its value; and that extensions of ET—in full, or based on its concepts or ideas—should be attempted with both new entrepreneurial phenomena and more.

Contesting theory’s SO!ul

While we all agree that assessing theory, including ET, both pre- and post-publication, is necessary, there remains debate over on what basis and at what level of aggregation. Consider the analogy of what makes something patentable as a basis for what seems like agreement over a theory’s value—it should be useful, novel (in some way) and non-obvious. By useful, we all seem to agree that the theory solves a problem or provides better prediction, better control, or better understanding of a phenomenon. (That is the core of science—providing ultimately practical benefits, or the basis for them, by reducing the resources needed to obtain a more desired outcome.) By novel, we all seem to agree that a publishable theory must provide something new (e.g. it considers a new phenomenon, argues a new premise or relationship or prediction, offers a new logic or a new method, or describes a new process) as its creative contribution. Note that such novelty in no way implies a substantial disconnect from all knowledge that has preceded the theory. By non-obvious, we hopefully can agree that if a knowledgeable manager or student, when presented with the focal problem, would intuitively make the same prediction as the candidate theory does, then that theory is not non-obvious—and so lacks value to society.

In terms of specifics of what a theory should be, some debate remains. While some standards exist as explicit guides (e.g. Dubin, 1969), others that are not so explicit, objective, or consistent are actually the ones enforced by the Reviewers and Editors who assess theory pre-publication. Because of the inconsistencies of that filtering process, we seem to agree that post-publication assessment is useful.

Yet, the specifics of such post-publication assessment of theory, including ET, raise substantial controversy. Consider two debated questions—whether citation rates imply value, and whether assessing individual theory papers is appropriate. To the former, while many use citation counts as an easy measure of popularity, there are several dangers in considering that a valid proxy of value for the underlying ideas in a theory paper. Citation counts are too easily manipulated, too often a result of the journal rather than the idea, and too often have no link to the full theory but only to one often obvious premise or prediction of it. Furthermore, highly-cited, trend-driven ideas of the past have often proven harmful (see the 1949 Nobel prize in medicine) while the less-cited, almost forgotten have often taken time to be noticed as highly valuable (e.g. lattice theory in mathematics). It is simply non-science to use citations as an indicator of value when so many better frameworks exist for assessment, especially in a relatively newer, more dispersed field like entrepreneurship where being more careful in theory valuation is important to legitimacy.

As to the latter question, some argue that theory, including ET, should be assessed post-publication only at the body-of-work level and not on an individual paper basis. That appears unnecessarily inconsistent, not only with how papers are evaluated pre-publication but also with how they are most often cited (i.e. individually). Assessment at the individual level is the most effective way to remove the weakest links in a body-of-work, stopping harmful accumulations of that link’s ideas. Most importantly, such assessments hold individual researchers responsible; in science there should be no protection afforded for being part of a crowd. Ideas should stand or fall on their merits, ¹ not on their associations. Furthermore, in order to get through Kuhnian defensive layers to have science progress (as a social entity), it is useful to be able to divide-and-conquer a body-of-work by critiquing its individual parts. Again, this is more important for a relatively newer network and often trend-driven field like entrepreneurship to keep it focused on the phenomena rather than on any power dynamics.

Coming SO!on

Returning to (end on) a positive note, we all agree with the promise of ET. Focusing on the entrepreneurial aspects (howsoever defined) of phenomena—both new (e.g. ecosystems) and old (e.g. supply chains)—brings a valuable, often micro-level lens to bear. Such a lens may even provide new insights into the theories of other fields, by shifting the level of analysis (e.g. from the firm-as-is to its path-from-founding). Perhaps ET will even get us closer to a holy grail of some control over the building of valuable heterogeneity of firms, platforms and clusters (rather than reliance on luck). Perhaps ET will provide more answers to addressing specific uncertainties, and at multiple levels (e.g. the decision-maker, organization, and economy). And, perhaps ET’s greater interest in market failures will add to their addressing rather than their exploitation, as many who write about social entrepreneurship continue to do (highlighting how more entrepreneurial entities and mindsets can provide advantages).

Of course, with such positive promise comes a responsibility to also theorize on negative aspects of the field’s phenomena—modeling, at the micro-scale, gray markets, criminal activity, tax avoidance, abuse of gig economy workers, intellectual property violations and so on that often accumulate into large societal impacts. Furthermore, it means theorizing on the impact of delayed regulatory responses to value creation based on new, scalable (entrepreneurial) technologies, and on the impacts of gatekeeper monopoly-like firms on smaller, newer ventures.

We have a good thing here—interesting phenomena, ideas, scholars, and stories—with a lot of room for synergies. So far we have tried but one (big tent) path for progressing ET; we ask openness to experimenting with other paths rather than fearing the unknown. Let’s entrepreneur this now!