Introduction

Broadly defined, entrepreneurship involves efforts to bring about new economic, social, institutional, or cultural environments (Rindova, Barry, & Ketchen, 2009). Since Schumpeter’s (1911, 1942) pioneering work, entrepreneurship has become widely acknowledged as the key driver of the market economy. Yet, entrepreneurship research as a scholarly discipline is relatively young, and several attempts toward developing a coherent entrepreneurship “research paradigm” have been made (e.g., Davidsson, 2003; Katz & Gartner, 1988; Sarasvathy, 2001; Shane, 2003; Shane & Venkataraman, 2000; Stevenson & Jarillo, 1990). In this respect, the landscape of entrepreneurship research is still to a large extent multiparadigmatic in nature, including fundamentally different perspectives on what entrepreneurship is, how entrepreneurial opportunities are formed, what determines the performance of new ventures, and so forth (Ireland, Webb, & Coombs, 2005; Leitch, Hill, & Harrison, 2010; Zahra & Wright, 2011).

This results in widespread confusion and frustration among entrepreneurship researchers regarding the lack of convergence toward a single paradigm and the continuing lack of definitional clarity (Davidsson, 2008; Ireland et al., 2005). Shane’s (2012) and Venkataraman, Sarasvathy, Dew, and Forster’s (2012) reflections on the 2010 Academy of Management Review decade award for their article “The promise of entrepreneurship as a field of research” (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000), as well as the subsequent debate, illustrate the disagreement on key paradigmatic issues among prominent entrepreneurship researchers. These differences are not only academic in nature, but also have profound practical implications. For instance, the narrative–constructivist notion of transformation implies that entrepreneurs should focus on acting and experimenting rather than trying to predict the future, as they cannot acquire valid knowledge about uncertain and partly unknowable environments (e.g., Sarasvathy, 2001; Venkataraman et al., 2012). By contrast, other researchers advocate that entrepreneurs should predict carefully, using comprehensive analysis and systematic procedures, before engaging in entrepreneurial activities (e.g., Delmar & Shane, 2003).