ENTREPRENEURS AS SCIENTISTS: A PRAGMATIST APPROACH TO PRODUCING VALUE OUT OF UNCERTAINTY

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Zellweger, Thomas; Zenger, Todd
• 署名单位: University of St Gallen; Utah System of Higher Education; University of Utah
• 刊物名称: ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0363-7425
• DOI: 10.5465/amr.2020.0503
• 发表日期: 2023
• 页码: 379-408
• 关键词: DECISION-MAKING; Factor markets; mental models; opportunity; strategy; FUTURE; heuristics; DISCOVERY; beliefs; RISK

摘要

Building on pragmatism, we advance an entrepreneur-as-scientist perspective and depict entrepreneurs as engaging in causally inferential action by forming beliefs, testing these beliefs, and responding to the feedback received. However, this sequence of entrepreneurial actions arrives with a set of companion doubts: namely, doubt about product- market fit, because the entrepreneurs' beliefs are self-chosen; doubt about feedback validity from false positives or false negatives; and doubt about over- and under-fitting in responses to feedback. We discuss the rationality of heuristics deployed by the entrepreneur to overcome these doubts. Our insights contribute to the microfoundations of entrepreneurial action and strategy by explaining how entrepreneurs generate the information to produce value out of uncertainty.