We challenge a stream of thought that focuses on drawing what we see as a frivolous contrast between creation and discovery view of entrepreneurship. Its detachment from the empirical world is tantamount to theoretical “fetishism”. We see opportunities as emergent structures, with ontologically real components, epistemologically real functional relationships, and requiring real human actions and interactions to come to fruition. This calls for building theory based on the strengths of both discovery and creation assumptions.
AdnerR.PólosL.RyallM.SorensonO. (2009). The case for formal theory. Academy of Management Review, 34, 201-208.
2.
AlvarezS.BarneyJ.AndersonP. (2013). Forming and exploiting ppportunities: The Implications of discovery and creation processes for entrepreneurial and organizational research. Organization Science, 24, 301-317.
3.
AlvarezS.BarneyJ.McBrideR.WuebkerR. (2014). Realism in the study of entrepreneurship. Academy of Management Review, 39, 227-231.
4.
CrawfordG.AguinisH.LichtensteinB.DavidssonP.McKelveyB. (2015) Power law distributions in entrepreneurship: Implications for theory and research. Journal of Business Venturing, 30, 696-713.
5.
DavidssonP.GordonS. (2012). Panel studies of new venture creation, a methods-focused review and suggestions for future research. Small Business Economics, 39, 853-876.
6.
DimovD. (2011). Grappling with the unbearable elusiveness of entrepreneurial opportunities. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 35, 57-81.
7.
GartnerW. (1988). “Who is an entrepreneur?” is the wrong question. American Journal of Small Business, 12(4), 11-32.
8.
McKelveyB. (2006). Van de Ven and Johnson’s “Engaged Scholarship”: Nice try, but. . . .Academy of Management Review, 31, 822-829.
9.
ReadD. (1990). The utility of mathematical constructs in building archaeological theory. In VoorripsA. (Ed.), Studies in modern archaeology (Vol. 3, pp. 29-60). Bonn, Germany: Helos.
10.
ShaneS. (2012). Reflections on the 2010 AMR decade award: Delivering on the promise of entrepreneurship as a field of research. Academy of Management Review, 37, 10-20.
11.
ShaneS.VenkataramanS. (2000). The promise of entrepreneurship as a field of research. Academy of Management Review, 25, 217-226.
12.
SuddabyR. (2014). Editor’s comments:Why theory? Academy of Management Review, 39, 407-411.
