Realism, Empiricism, and Fetishism in the Study of Entrepreneurship

Abstract

Our short Dialogue challenges a stream of thought that focuses on drawing what we see as a frivolous contrast between creation and discovery view of entrepreneurship. In the former, entrepreneurs create opportunities ex nihilo; in the latter they discover them as “luggage lost at a train station.” “Fetishism” is a label Roy Suddaby applies to articles that are “detached from the empirical world.” The fundamental question is: “How to make entrepreneurial research more relevant and useful to entrepreneurs?” We advocate computational simulation models with input and outcome parameters docked to empirical studies, with agent action tied to grounded process research.

Keywords: entrepreneurship, opportunities, philosophy of science, realism, ontology, discovery, creation