**1. Introduction**

The research area of entrepreneurial decision-making remains important despite being bogged down over the last two decades by too few dominant approaches representing too few schools. Therefore, it is time to provoke. It is time to expose the weaknesses in those approaches to stop their persistence and to allow new ideas to breathe. Such an exercise is important in order to shift attention away from favored but flawed logics and towards alternative ideas that offer new models that address current weaknesses and explore fresh topics (Renwick et al. 2019). That is our intended contribution here.

That contribution is scientific. Every step in the progress of science entails an improvement to a field's knowledge base. That always entails suggesting (if not proving) errors in the current knowledge base (e.g., gaps, failures to consider interdependencies, incorrect assumptions, and so on). Often this critique of currently dominant ideas is done implicitly or indirectly, or framed in a positive light, as complementary. We are more blunt here. We expose the major weaknesses and failures of two currently dominant approaches in entrepreneurial decision-making in order to provide a basis to move forward, and then we sugges<sup>t</sup> several alternative ways to do so.

We define entrepreneurial decision-making as choices made in the pursuit of differential value creation, appropriation and defense, necessarily against competing forces and beliefs (e.g., Westgren and Wuebker 2019). We see entrepreneurship research as the study of new value generation, often under conditions of relative uncertainty and resource scarcity, often through new products, processes and structures that address an *ex post* identifiable failure in a past market (Venkataraman 1997). Analyzing the phenomenon of entrepreneurship, in addition to the core of that process—decision-making—is vitally important because the majority of businesses in advanced economies are small, often new ventures, that have a disproportionate effect on both job creation and innovation. Therefore, when the model approaches are deficient, the non-beneficial effects from following their prescriptions, and from ignoring alternative approaches, can be significant.

Our plan in this paper for addressing those issues is the following: We first critically assess the two dominant approaches represented in the creativity school (e.g., Alvarez and Barney 2007) and in the logic of effectuation (Sarasvathy 2001), in addition to their epistemological basis. Then, we outline three alternative approaches that address some current flaws while building on a common underlying ambition to explain differentiated value generation. For each alternative, we discuss practical and academic implications. Finally, we summarize and conclude.

### **2. Critical Assessment of Dominant Approaches**

Effectuation and the creativity school are two entrepreneurial decision-making model approaches that each have come to dominate the discussion since the early-to-mid 2000s (with their original articles being cited over 5300 and 2200 times in Google Scholar, and with numerous follow-on papers for each continuing into the present—e.g., Grégoire and Cherchem 2020; Mansoori and Lackeus 2019; Chandra 2017; McBride and Wuebker 2020, respectively). Below, we critique them and their epistemological base in order to sugges<sup>t</sup> each is detrimental to the field. Each effectively exploited the weakness in then-current models in order to bolster a relative versus an absolute promise of improvement in understanding. Yet, each model is itself weak: each is incomplete (e.g., Ranabahu and Barrett 2019), based on questionable epistemology for the task, prescribes potentially detrimental behaviors, and does not fully recognize the ideas upon which it is built. Despite those issues, each approach has been seen in multiple publications in our top journals in a manner that took attention away from alternative approaches and reinforced limited perspectives. Table 1 summarizes our detailed critiques described below.

Given our definition of entrepreneurial decision-making, any model approach has to consider, at a minimum, the basis of differential value-creation. Without heterogeneity of a ventures' factors (e.g., their resources, capabilities, beliefs), then theoretically there is no new value to create. Without new value to create, there is no path to competitive advantage (CA) or sustained CA (SCA). This logic is clearly stated in the strategic managemen<sup>t</sup> literature through the resource-based view (referred to as RBV henceforth—Barney 1986, 1989, 1991; Penrose 1959; Peteraf 1993; Wernerfelt 1984)1. Unfortunately, the RBV is deficient in explaining where resource heterogeneity originates—" ... an important question in resource-based theory remains unanswered—where do heterogeneous resources come from" (Alvarez and Barney 2007, p. 22). Alvarez and Barney answered the question by connecting the RBV to entrepreneurial opportunity identification. They assert that the value of factors or products<sup>2</sup>

They were not the only ones pushing for a perspective on strategic decision-making in entrepreneurship based on creativity. While they did so from a questionable and esoteric metaphysical basis, others did it through a select-sample lab experiment inductive basis (Sarasvathy 2001), or from an old conceptual basis (e.g., bricolage—Levi-Strauss 1966). All promised ways to magically generate something from nothing—mostly by leveraging existing (read free, or mistakenly represented as costless) factors (both physical and social) that somehow all rival parties had missed. However, none explained either resource heterogeneity or the underlying market failures involved (e.g., Arend et al. 2015; Beugré 2017; Guo et al. 2018). Below, we consider these weaknesses and failures in more detail.

<sup>1</sup> The RBV has also been proposed as a new theory of the firm (Conner 1991). Additionally, as with most recent theories, the RBV has received its share of critical analyses over time, across both fundamental empirical and logical issues. Critiques exist questioning how the RBV has been empirically tested. These sugges<sup>t</sup> that the RBV has never been tested in its proposed complete form, but has only found support in loose and convenient statistically significant correlations between specific internal factors and performance outcomes (e.g., Arend 2006; Arend and Levesque 2010; Newbert 2007). Critiques also exist questioning its logic. These include concerns over the tautological nature of the value characteristic that defines focal RBV resources,acharacteristicthathasneitheranindependentdefinitionnoraconvincingoriginstory(PriemandButler2001).

 2 We use the term 'product' here in the broadest sense as an 'output' of entrepreneurial action—e.g., as a consumable product, as a new process, as a new business model, as a new form of organization, as a means to identify a new factor market, and so on. is exposed through entrepreneurial actions oriented by either discovery or creativity (e.g., Alvarez and Barney 2007)3.


**Table 1.** Critical issues with dominant entrepreneurial decision-making approaches.

### **3. Assessing the Creativity School's Approach**

The first example of dominant work involves the creativity school of entrepreneurial activity (Alvarez and Barney 2007). Its thesis is that many opportunities are not discovered through physical search but created through social construction (i.e., where people work together to create artifacts). The contrast is to the pre-existing (economics-oriented) discovery approach based on scientific realism (i.e., the view that the universe is objective and mind-independent). Its prescriptions involve training entrepreneurs in selling their ideas in order to build (partner-based) upstream supply (of resources and funds) and downstream demand (from customers) related to their new products or services. The basis hook for this approach is metaphysical—based on the epistemology (i.e., the study of knowledge) and ontology (i.e., the study of reality) of social constructivism where what is known, if not what is real, about the opportunity is generated through interactions with other human beings.

This approach to entrepreneurial decision-making entails several weaknesses, starting with the opportunity construct they use. Alvarez, Barney, and Anderson (Alvarez et al. 2013, p. 302) define it in the following way: " ... an opportunity exists when competitive imperfections exist in product or factor markets". That definition is based on Venkataraman (1997, p. 121) weak premise of entrepreneurship—which is his observation that there exist opportunities to enhance individual wealth by exploiting market ine fficiencies that exist most of the time in most societies. Therefore, the definition is imprecise because opportunities exist almost always. Venkataraman (1997, p. 122) provides a better definition one page later—that opportunities exist because information is dispersed; however, the creativity school does not use it. Their chosen definition also imprecise because it does not actually state what an opportunity is but instead refers to when it exists. Furthermore, this approach o ffers no explanation for why the market imperfection exists; and, that matters because the source of that market failure (e.g., whether it be market power, an externality, a public good, technological infeasibility, or something else) does make a di fference as to how, or even if, the market-failure-as-opportunity can be exploited at that time.

Besides being based on an imprecise definition of the core construct of opportunity, the approach is also based on a questionable contrast to a newly-labeled 'discovery' school. Like their definition of opportunities, Alvarez and Barney (2010) also source this label from Venkataraman (1997) 4. Discovered opportunities involve relatively less e ffort and less path dependence than those that are 'created'. The main di fference translates into the idea that 'discovery' implies that any venture lucky enough to stumble upon the market imperfection can exploit it, whereas 'creativity' implies that there are only a few ventures that could follow the unique path in that stumbling. The dividing assumption appears to be simply that discovery provides less protection from rivals than creativity. We question whether such a defining assumption is worthy of the dominance of this approach.

The creativity school fails to answer the origin questions of a strategic factor<sup>5</sup> (SF) or its value, although that is seemingly its main purpose. It simply kicks those questions down the 'regress road' by newly labeling the under-specified actions in factor markets from the RBV as being the behaviors of those following this school of entrepreneurial activity (Arend 2015). In that school, Alvarez and Barney (2007) provide descriptions of self-evident conditions relating to those behaviors (e.g., that path dependence is harder to imitate; that an uncertain context is harder to decide in than a risky one;

<sup>4</sup> While Venkataraman (1997) does state that opportunities can be discovered or created (Venkataraman 1997, p. 122), he also states that they are discovered and created (Venkataraman 1997, p. 136) or discovered, created and exploited (Venkataraman 1997, p. 120). However, given he does not detail the difference in discovery versus creation, the implication appears to be more likely that all opportunities are discovered and then must be acted upon through creation to be exploited, a process which does not actually sugges<sup>t</sup> this dichotomy.

<sup>5</sup> We use the term 'strategic factor' to include any resource, capability, asset, routine, organizational form or otherwise firm-accessible or—owned 'thing' that has the potential to provide the organization with a competitive advantage (i.e., if exploited e fficiently, it is a source of SCA [super-normal economic rents]). Such strategic factors have been described in the RBV as having a particular set of characteristics often termed VRIO or VRIN—standing for Valuable, Rare, Inimitable, Organizationally appropriable, and Non-substitutable (Barney 1986).

and, so on) instead of addressing the focal origin story. The main origin explanation remains as the RBV's endowment story (i.e., the SF is a windfall found in a factor or production market). In other words, there is no new prescriptive value or potential for insight in their answer to the question of the origins of those heterogeneous resources<sup>6</sup> that can leverage opportunities.

The creativity school is unoriginal. It not only borrows heavily from the RBV but also from historic metaphysical debates, and without su fficient reference to the latter. To the former, the RBV also has two schools—inherit and build (Barney 1986, 1989, 1991; Peteraf 1993; Wernerfelt 1984). The inherit school describes auditing the firm for its discoverable SFs, but mostly focuses on the e fficient leverage of them into competitive advantage. The build school describes actively participating in factor markets to arbitrage and generate the SFs that provide advantage in the product market (e.g., Barney 1986; Peteraf 1993). Such activity presumably entails social interactions where suppliers are underpaid for factors and partners and customers are then influenced and sold on the new value of those same factors [that may or may not have been newly combined or refined]. Essentially, the discovery school is the inherit school and the creativity school is the build school (Alvarez and Barney 2007).

These dichotomized schools are based on optimistic narratives. The first narrative, representing the inherit/discover school, involves a newly recognized windfall (e.g., identified through being alert—Kirzner 1973) that is easy to monetize. Often, it is a recent inventorying or enlightenment that detects factors (e.g., private information) that can be used to arbitrage a market in relatively few and relatively certain, well-understood steps (e.g., Wernerfelt 1984). The second narrative, representing the build/create school, involves a spark-like windfall that is hard to monetize (e.g., Alvarez et al. 2013). Often, it is in the form of an inspiration (or curiosity, or feeling, or insight) that leads to actionable beliefs that can be taken towards, in the best cases, uncovering further sparks to further actions that require many steps, many players, and many negotiations in order to build something that did not seem to be there (in that form) before, that now others value (e.g., Alvarez and Barney 2007). Additionally, that valuable thing can then be monetized in a process requiring relatively many steps that have less certainty (e.g., steps that are less proven, involving less confidence, less experience, and with more that can go wrong and also be more costly). In other words, there is not much new here; it is the RBV 2.0 (and 20 years on) with new language about epistemology and uncertainty added.

The added uncertainty, though, is poorly explained and also poorly supported. The creativity school bases itself on the notion of Knightian (Knight 1921) uncertainty and explicitly promotes that opportunities pursued under it must be done creatively, in the social constructivist manner. However, simple arbitrage does fulfill the definition of entrepreneurial action under Knightian uncertainty and is often conducted through what its most famous practitioners would describe as discovery activity focused on ontologically real entities. Furthermore, regarding the creation school's missing explanations of the precise uncertainties it involves, nowhere does it explain the role of uncertainty

<sup>6</sup>It is realistic to acknowledge heterogeneity in entrepreneurship and strategic management: *all* firms and contexts do differ from each other (in space and time), and often in non-trivial ways. That said, it is common to assume homogeneity over most firm factors when theorizing in order to simplify the competitive context, as that allows more focus on the main drivers of performance (e.g., Bain 1954; Porter 1980; Venkataraman 1997). Homogenization is also done in practice so that heterogeneous factors can made to serve standardized functions in order to be of use in the firm's business model (e.g., unique people are trained to operate a welder on a mass assembly line). That homogenization provides several benefits, including improved skill applicability, larger scalability, greater share-ability, easier training, and more effective internal communication and coordination. Those benefits, in turn, generate higher production consistency, quality, and predictability. While heterogeneity is often homogenized so that the firm can do its business e fficiently, heterogeneity is also often leveraged to protect how it does that business so that it is not imitated through external homogenization. That said, it is important to note that most heterogeneous firm factors are not potential sources of advantage (e.g., the heterogeneity of factors is usually not useful, or it is di fficult to commercialize, or it is easy to imitate or to substitute for). Identifying what is and what is not a potentially advantageous heterogeneity is not a trivial exercise, and one that many firms do not attempt proactively for many reasons (including the di fficulties in predicting uncertain possible futures—Hirschman 1958). We note that the creativity school does not identify either where advantageous heterogeneity originates or even how to identify any endowment of it. Instead, it implicitly assumes that the heterogeneity is there and that a plucky entrepreneur can take steps to identify and exploit its inherent potential value.

versus ambiguity versus ignorance in what an opportunity is, or in the origins of heterogeneous resources, or in how to be a more successful entrepreneur in practice.

The metaphysics hook used in the creation school is also borrowed. To be clear, metaphysics is its own field, with its own experts and its own history. Therefore, borrowing from it should be done in ways that honor its expertise and its record of research. That would include the acknowledgement that the discovery versus invention debate is well-trodden in metaphysics, and ye<sup>t</sup> it appears to be the basis of the discovery versus creation dichotomy born in the mid-2000s. That original debate between scientific realists and social constructivists has been going on for a long time in the metaphysics field (see Bell 1994; Hacking 1999; and Winner, Simon, Kant, Nietzsche, and Plato for work decades and centuries before that). It has been a subject of the 'science wars' (Sokal 1996). A fantastic account of the creativity school appears in Bijker (1987) piece on Bakelite (which is uncited by the original entrepreneurship creation school authors some 20 years later). Yet, the idea that some entrepreneurial scholars newly invented such metaphysical concepts at the core of this school continues to this day.

### **4. Assessing the Metaphysics behind the Approaches**

The same metaphysical hook is relied upon by both currently dominant approaches. Each relied upon social constructivism to contrast to the scientific realism that preceded it (e.g., the predictive-planning perspective prior to e ffectuation and in an alertness-search perspective prior to the creation school). We critique that hook by assessing a current example by authors in the creativity school now7. In their metaphysics-centered paper, McBride and Wuebker (2020) state that they untangle "the opportunity debate because there are now criteria for what makes an opportunity (or any social phenomena) objective" (p. 22); indeed, they claim that they have just provided "a novel perspective" that delivers a uniquely "clear understanding of social entities" (pp. 2–3) by newly defining the concept of epistemological objectivity. That is the new core contribution that they argue. However, unfortunately, previous metaphysics research had defined the same concept more than a decade prior.

Montuschi (2007, p. 177): "A philosophical distinction is normally referred to between two concepts of objectivity: an ontological concept ... and an epistemological concept (objectivity is a property of the content of mental states and acts) ... epistemological objectivity can be assessed in its own terms, that is the objectivity of our beliefs can be established by reference to other beliefs which may provide justifiable, coherent, intelligible, rational support ... it is indeed on the basis of notions such as 'the way reality appears to us' ... that epistemological objectivity can be at all ascertained." Clearly, the originally uncited Montuschi paper had already defined the criteria for what makes a social phenomenon objective.

They go on to predict that once entrepreneurship (as well as any other social science field) has seen their 'unique' answer to 'what is social objectivity' then the floodgates will open to significant advances in theorizing. They state "that getting the answer to the question about what makes any social phenomena objective might be the single most important piece of the foundation for the future success of the social sciences", so much so that the lack of that answer has hindered "advances in entrepreneurship theory" (p. 23) until just now. Unfortunately, given that answer has existed for over a decade, they not only have admitted that the creation school itself did not un-hinder entrepreneurial decision-making theoretical progress but they have also made the case that adding a 'core' metaphysical conceptualization has not either. This is all the more impactful because it comes from supporters of

<sup>7</sup> Editorial discretion appears as one of the reasons for the persistence of these dominant models. When authors of these schools also act as editors for their co-author's and co-faculty's pieces that support and cite that work then several apparent conflicts of interest arise that should be, but are not, checked by our journals and our academies even when these appear to violate our ethics codes and the blindness in our reviewing processes that lies at the core of the legitimacy of the quality of research in our field.

the creation school and its social constructivist, subjective reality. This is why this example paper was chosen.

That is not to say that metaphysics is unimportant to research. Metaphysics provides the premises that act as the platform for theory-building (e.g., Dubin 1969). It does so by defining reality and knowledge together as a primary set of facts from which deduction can proceed and for how rational logic can work through induction. Theory-building abstracts from real phenomena, providing a small world model to capture its most important relationships in order to increase understanding, prediction and control of future similar events. However, the practice of entrepreneurship is a real and large world phenomenon involving many complexities, dynamics and, as with most social science targets, non-stationary relationships. It is quite far removed from the tiny world of metaphysics. Therefore, it should not be surprising that actual entrepreneurs do not care about the metaphysical arguments that money is socially constructed or not ontologically real; they conduct business as if it were, just as the academics studying them do.

Regardless of that tenuous connection between the tiny and large worlds related to entrepreneurial decision-making, supporters of the two dominant approaches argue for both a direct (through pedagogy) and an indirect (through the small world) influence of metaphysics (e.g., Sarasvathy 2001; McBride and Wuebker 2020). The direct influence involves the question of how best to teach entrepreneurs to obtain and exploit opportunities. Should they be taught to search for physically real objects (e.g., a new oil deposit) or to sell potential stakeholders on the mind-dependent objects that they make (e.g., a new social media platform)? However, this appears to be a forced choice on its face as all serious entrepreneurship textbooks embrace the requirement to cover both search skills (e.g., market research; reengineering) and creation skills (e.g., brainstorming; prototyping; sales and negotiations; team-building), either separately or through their explicit combination (e.g., in design thinking—Liedtka and Ogilvie 2011).

The indirect influence is via the small world, and accomplished by using the explicit modeling of the entrepreneurial process as the mediator. The argued premise is that the study of that process has to be conducted from one of two philosophies—scientific realism or social constructivism (Alvarez and Barney 2010). Most entrepreneurship scholars would absolutely disagree, given the very few studies that have ever referred to their epistemological choice, and the even fewer entrepreneurs who have raised it as an issue8. However, even when such a grand concept as epistemological objectivity is (re)discovered as it was in 2020, it is not used to provide new insights into the defining characteristics of entrepreneurial activity like uncertainties and the causes of the underlying market failures or, specifically, how to improve entrepreneurial decision-making9. Additionally, its impacts on even basic concepts like entrepreneurial opportunity also appear unclear, partly because such concepts themselves suffer from ongoing definitional disputes (e.g., Davidsson 2015). In fact, this metaphysics-based entrepreneurship stream provides no proof that specific gaps or mistakes in practitioner behaviors exist due to some lack of ontological or epistemological understanding by new venture founders or operators. While it is hard to deny that reality (ontology) and truthful knowledge (epistemology) do very much matter in today's unusual informational landscape, the final arbiters of how such issues affect innovation will not be the philosophers but instead will be the entrepreneurs who are on the ground finding ways to better satisfy human needs—both tangible and intangible10.

<sup>8</sup> It is worthwhile to note that all social science phenomena confront this metaphysical debate. Most have recognized it and moved on in the practice of *wissenschaft* in their fields where even the mind-dependent objects and events can be (and have been successfully) scientifically studied in the empirical and experimental traditions (Daston 2000).

<sup>9</sup> Consider the entrepreneurial activity of Warren Buffett: he represents the epitome of a Knightian entrepreneur despite the fact that he is squarely in the discovery school, searching for mispricing and exploiting it for profit, rather than creating anything new. He represents a blatant counter-example to the core metaphysical premises of the creation school. This is because even though he supposedly deals in that realm—as the entities he deals with are mostly mind-dependent, the uncertainties 'beyond risk', and the market failures mainly informational asymmetries—his data and models do not focus on any score of social objectivity but ye<sup>t</sup> remain highly successful.

<sup>10</sup> Additionally, it remains unclear what social value there is to (re)defining epistemological objectivity alone. Prescribing greater attention be paid by entrepreneurs to selling the sizzle without any explicit assessment of quality of the steak is to

### **5. Assessing the E** ff**ectuation Logic**

The other dominant model of entrepreneurial decision-making is e ffectuation logic (Sarasvathy 2001). While this model has been e ffectively critiqued elsewhere (e.g., Arend et al. 2015, 2016), it persists in its influence. Therefore, rather than repeating an analysis of its past exposed weaknesses, we will focus more on other issues.

We allege that e ffectuation's prescriptions have been shown to be detrimental to non-expert entrepreneurs (Baron 2009; Günzel-Jensen and Robinson 2017). E ffectuation is based on a small set of (27) experts' observed behaviors in their entrepreneurial process as captured artificially in a lab setting with no new product created and nothing at stake. The obvious problem with any selective study—any study that selects subjects based on one common criterion—is that the criterion may be a necessary prerequisite for the behaviors to work properly. Therefore, it may well be that entrepreneurial expertise is a necessary attribute for successfully carrying out e ffectuation logic's prescriptions. Without such expertise, it may well be di fficult to know what a ffordable loss is or whom to co-create with; in fact, it may well be that following the prescriptions as a novice may make outcomes worse (e.g., without expertise it is more likely that pursuing partners will result in the entrepreneur being taken advantage of).

We allege further concerns about e ffectuation related to its corruption of not only pre-existing ideas (e.g., bricolage, experimentation, ambidexterity) but also pre-existing words (e.g., causation). Such verbal re-definitions may have been an e ffective marketing move (Mehrpouya and Willmott 2018), but they raise concerns. Managerially important words like e ffectuate, causation, control, contingency, and isotropy<sup>11</sup> were suddenly redefined; and, seemingly without scientific justification. Not only did these established terms take on completely new meanings, over time somehow several became keyword choices for journal submission. We believe that doing so created unnecessary confusion for the field. It also appears a bad precedent to allow a proposed logic to so heavily draw on standard business tactics without fully crediting those who observed, analyzed and described those years prior. For example, e ffectuation's leveraging of existing means is akin to bricolage (Levi-Strauss 1966). Its risk-reduction strategies include then-known tactics such as staying local, experimenting cheaply, and beg-borrow-and-stealing (e.g., acting within a ffordable losses), and finding partners (e.g., co-creating). Expert entrepreneurs did not invent these behaviors, nor did e ffectuation newly generate them from lab observations. Therefore, it seems disingenuous to sugges<sup>t</sup> otherwise. It also does nothing to improve entrepreneurial decision-making.

Further harms have occurred because e ffectuation's five-part logic has been distorted and those distortions have been exploited to o ffer empirical support. The metaphors in the e ffectuation's story have since been reengineered into a set of empirical measures. For example, while the story is presented as a holistic multi-part logic, the set of measures has not been supported as a consistent holistic construct empirically (Arend et al. 2015; Chandler et al. 2011; Welter et al. 2016). The distorted testing extends to where the story is assessed as well. The logic has most often been tested in less-than-chaotic contexts, where prediction is possible, and where the new ventures are not so new, nor the entrepreneurs so expert (Baron 2009; Skeat and Perry 2008). However, one issue with the distorted measures appears

promote the next Theranos or Madoff. Making others believe deeper and wider about an idea does not alone make it worthy of pursuit let alone of social benefit.

<sup>11</sup> The dictionary definitions of these established words are clear, and clearly not what effectuation went on to cast them as: effectuate—to bring about, to cause to happen, to accomplish, to achieve (from latin, and having nothing to do with the five characteristics of the 'logic' described); causation—the action of producing, anything that produces an effect (from latin, and having nothing to do with the opposite of the 'logic', given causing and effectuating mean the same thing); control—to exercise restraint or direction over, to manage, to operate (from middle English, and having nothing to do with a lack of prediction or planning); contingency—dependence on chance or on the fulfillment of a condition (from 1560s English, and not being the 'opposite of knowledge'); isotropy—uniformity in all orientations (from Greek, and not being a type of real-world decision context because individual reality is not homogeneous given practical path-dependencies and neurobiological functioning). There is no scientific justification for re-defining existing words rather than naming possible new constructs that have very different meanings relative to those words. If terms have changeable meanings, involving changes that are not corrections, then any version of science allowing that is unsound.

to be a direct consequence of the way in which the original story was presented—as a relative logic. The logic relied on contrasts for definition as did the operationalizations that followed. But that has led to problems, as many of the contrasting characteristics do not define an opposite end of the given dimension. For example, prediction is not the opposite of control, chaos is. Goals are not the opposite of means, scarcity is. Market share is not the opposite of partnering, fighting is (which is more than simply competing). Contingency is not the opposite of knowledge, ignorance is. Additionally, there is no specification for what the opposite of a ffordable loss is to contrast to; however, it is certainly not maximizing expected value. Yet, these are the construct scales upon which rests whatever empirical support the logic has (Chandler et al. 2011; Perry et al. 2012). Worse, these scales are internally incongruous. Leveraging knowledge is consistent with leveraging existing means, and not inconsistent with leveraging contingencies given one needs knowledge to do so. Survey-style empirical studies have revealed that inconsistency (Chandler et al. 2011).

A flawed model that persists mainly based on distorted testing is not helpful for improving entrepreneurial decision-making. Furthermore, its core premise is simply wrong12, and that is significant. Because, if we accept and advocate a logic that is factually wrong in its premises, then we really do not care about the science of business, but only the business of science.

Like the creativity school, e ffectuation has also persisted by o ffering a contrast to the overextended models that existed prior (e.g., those based on business planning), by o ffering a version of the entrepreneur as heroic and active, by exploiting social constructivism, by appropriating past ideas, and by o ffering (but not delivering on) some kind of new access to creativity (Arend et al. 2015). While it may have been refreshing to see such contrasting perspectives when they were first published well over a decade ago, the dominance of these models needs to end for our field to progress in understanding and improvement upon entrepreneurial decision-making13.
