Beyond bridging rigor and relevance: The three-body problem in entrepreneurship

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Introduction

If we have two bodies that interact gravitationally, and we know their positions and velocities at a given point in time, it is possible to predict all their future positions. However, the introduction of a third body surprisingly leads to a problem that is analytically unsolvable. This suggests that if we have a system of two bodies that are unsettled with respect to one another, there may be a hidden third body lurking around that, if identified and understood, could help us make better sense of the system as a whole. While metaphors should be used with care, the three-body problem can help illuminate a pressing epistemological issue within our own discipline.

In the entrepreneurship field and indeed the broader field of management, the two main bodies in play are theory and practice. Compared to more internally oriented disciplines such as physics, psychology, and sociology, scholars in professional fields such as engineering, medicine, management and entrepreneurship have an imperative to not only be scientifically rigorous but also develop knowledge that can inform practice (Romme, 2016). However, since theory and practice are quite different, managing these dual demands is challenging, both epistemologically and organizationally. The epistemological focus of theory is typically true and generalizable representations of reality developed through appropriate methods,1 whereas the world of entrepreneurial practice is propelled by knowledge of how to deal with specific problematic situations as they arise (Kieser and Leiner, 2009). Organizationally, scholars in professional schools have also shown a tendency to separate into two groups over time (Gulati, 2007, Simon, 1967). Theory-oriented scholars risk shielding themselves from practice and may gradually begin to nurture an intra-disciplinary culture where goals, values, and approval are sought only among academic peers. In contrast, practitioner-oriented scholars risk seeing theory as esoteric and irrelevant and by doing so may end up as “slightly out-of-date purveyor[s] of almost-current business practice” (Simon, 1967: 12).

While this description is an exaggeration, it nevertheless highlights a real tension. The entrepreneurship field is quite internally and theoretically oriented, but its scholars also feel a strong “gravitational” pull from the world of practice through demands for experiential entrepreneurship courses, proof of how research results have practical impact, and the formulations of “Executive Summaries” in otherwise research oriented journals such as the Journal of Business Venturing. Similarly, practitioners are attracted by actionable knowledge that can inform their situated judgments and actions. Unfortunately, scholars have a hard time squaring theoretical ambitions with the concerns of practitioners, which are often considered to be theoretically uninteresting. As a result, entrepreneurship teachers often rely on books like “The Lean Startup” (Ries, 2011) or “The Startup Owners-Manual” (Blank and Dorf, 2012), which are not grounded in research, precisely because they provide the kinds of hands-on and prescriptive advice that students and entrepreneurs want.

Our experiences as teachers as well as consultants thus point to the existence and desirability of a third body of such pragmatically oriented design knowledge that cannot be reduced to either general theoretical principles or the situated knowledge of practicing entrepreneurs (Dimov, 2016). This practical intuition is echoed by established theoretical typologies (Flyvbjerg, 2001). Aristotle famously spoke of three approaches2 to knowledge: episteme, which denotes context-independent and value-free ‘know why’ theories about the world that are universally true; techne, which denotes context-dependent, pragmatic and goal-oriented ‘know how’ techniques for effectively doing things in light of given goals; and phronesis, which denotes the capacity for judgmental and wise action performed in real time under uncertain conditions. The world of theory arguably maps quite well onto the Aristotelian concept of episteme, whereas phronetic knowledge is clearly needed in the uncertain world of entrepreneurial practice. This leaves techne as a natural candidate for our missing third body of knowledge—not least since its emphasis on ‘know how’ and pragmatic validity clearly resembles the prescriptive techniques outlined in practitioner-oriented entrepreneurship-books.

The purpose of this special issue is therefore to outline a distinct third body of knowledge in the form of pragmatically oriented entrepreneurial design principles,3 to discuss whether it deserves a position on par with theory and practice, and to explore its interfaces with both the causal mechanisms of entrepreneurship theory and the complex realities of entrepreneurial practice (c.f. Romme and Endenburg, 2006; Van Burg et al., 2008). By design principles we mean context specific and pragmatic heuristics that prescribe actions often with the following syntax: ‘to achieve X in situation Y, something like Z will help’ (Van Aken, 2004: 227). By highlighting design as a valuable third body of knowledge, in this virtual special issue we depart from the commonly proposed way to bridge the rigor-relevance gap that simply encourages closer collaboration and more intimate involvement of practitioners in the research process (e.g. Shapiro et al., 2007; Starkey and Madan, 2001). While such closeness may very well be valuable, we submit that interlocking theory and practice may not be the best option to produce a stable system. Instead, we follow Simon (1996) who argued for a science of design whose purpose is not to produce descriptive theories of the world as it is, but rather to develop pragmatic tools “in the service of action” (Romme, 2003, p. 562).

Section snippets

Entrepreneurship Scholarship as a two and three-body problem

Most entrepreneurship research is premised on the very basic assumption that there are regularities in the world that underlie phenomena such as new venture creation and that the purpose of theory development is to identify and explain those regularities, preferably in the form of causal mechanisms (e.g. Busenitz et al., 2003; Carlsson et al., 2013; Davidsson, 2004; Shane, 2003; Venkataraman, 1997). Such enquiry is generally underpinned by philosophical realism, where the central criterion for

This virtual special issue

Through this virtual special issue, we seek to bring attention to design principles as a third body of knowledge that complements theory and practice, and to the value of more reflective efforts to translate general theory into actionable design interventions in order to make them useful for practice. However, design principles are not merely a matter of translating general theory into an intermediate form that has the potential to inform concrete practice. In order to establish their pragmatic

Theory <=> Design

The relationship between theory and design goes both ways. First, theoretical knowledge can be used to develop design principles. This is different from the executive summaries and boilerplate section on practical implications that comes at the end of otherwise theoretically oriented papers. Instead we seek contributions that extend beyond theoretical insights in an effort to formulate effective design principles. Thinking about design can help highlight the various ways in which our theories

Practice <=> Design

The relationship between practice and design is also bidirectional. First, there is the implementation of specific design principles for the attainment of desired outputs in specific contexts. This can be formulated as pedagogic or policy interventions where some design principle is used in an attempt to affect entrepreneurial practice, or in action research where the focus on solving particular problems calls for more explicit consideration or evaluation of design principles. How are such

A virtual, open issue

Rather than writing our introduction last, to make sense of papers already finished, we start with our introduction to make space for papers not yet begun. As such, the issue sets a beginning but no foreseeable end.

This is a virtual special issue (VSI) in that papers operate as part of the normal flow of the journal, but are designated as being submitted to and, if successful, as part of the special issue. If accepted, articles will appear in the first available regular issue and simultaneously

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