Who’s the practitioner and who’s the patient for entrepreneurship research?
The chain of command by which medical research influences our lives is rather straightforward. But how does it work for entrepreneurship research? Are roles and relationships of involved stakeholders clearly defined?
In medicine, researchers publish their findings in scientific journals. The results influences what aspiring doctors (the practitioners) learn at medical school. After leaving medical school, many doctors keep reading medical journals to remain on top of the latest trends. In that way, medical research impacts millions of patients because the practitioners read scientific journals and follow the implications. In a nutshell: researchers impact practitioners, and practitioners impact patients, always with the goal in mind of increasing health by preventing and curing diseases.
Ideally, entrepreneurship research would work in a similar way. In fact, entrepreneurship research enjoys increasing popularity within the fields of management, economics, organizational studies, and even psychology. Similar to medical research, many of these publications influence the education of entrepreneurship all over the world.
So far, so good. But there is one problem: entrepreneurs (the supposed practitioners) hardly read entrepreneurship journals outside university. Why is that so? And who are the patients in this constellation?
Entrepreneurs hardly read entrepreneurship journals.
The problem of relevance in entrepreneurship research
Why don’t entrepreneurs read academic entrepreneurship journals? Open discussions on the relevance of entrepreneurship research commonly identify two reasons.
First, entrepreneurship research has trouble keeping up with the latest trends in business. It usually takes several years to publish in leading entrepreneurship journals if we account for the time spent on data collection, data analysis, and the peer-review process. By the time an article is published, the world outside academic walls has likely moved forward, which makes it difficult for entrepreneurs to learn from somewhat outdated findings.
Second, the lack of a common language alienates many practitioners. The lingo of academic journals is difficult to understand. Those who attend entrepreneurship classes at university might have less trouble reading the articles. But unlike medical doctors, entrepreneurs do not necessarily attend university or specific entrepreneurship programs. After all, the beauty of entrepreneurship is that anyone can become an entrepreneur regardless of education.
Entrepreneurship research has trouble keeping up with the latest trends and the language it uses alienates many practitioners.
In a recent video interview, I discussed these problems with Alex McKelvie, a distinguished entrepreneurship researcher. He suggested that some people within the business school environment should translate the findings published in academic journals in “a manner that is digestible and accessible for students and practitioners” — just like there are tons of examples where medical research is translated into everyday language so it becomes accessible for the patients.
But wait — translating research for patients? Didn’t we say entrepreneurs are practitioners? After all, who are the patients of entrepreneurship research?
Who’s the patient for entrepreneurship research?
If we stick to the idea of entrepreneurs being the practitioners, then most likely customers and businesses would be the entrepreneur’s patients. In medical terms, entrepreneurs would cure customer pains or save companies from stagnation.
Currently, I’d argue that most entrepreneurship research follows this logic. But it still faces the challenge of relevance. If entrepreneurship scholars wanted to make a stronger impact on practice, they would need to (a) ask questions that are relevant to entrepreneurs and (b) publish their results in a format that entrepreneurs find accessible.
There is, however, another alternative worth considering: what if entrepreneurs are really the patients for entrepreneurship research? After all, they experience many pains and struggles while starting up a firm and more people fail than succeed. If the goal of entrepreneurship research is to foster entrepreneurship within our society, it might be worthwhile to shift the focus from solving the pains and problems of customers and companies, to solving the pains and problems of entrepreneurs.
What if entrepreneurs are really the patients for entrepreneurship research and educators its practitioners?
In this constellation, entrepreneurship educators, mentors, and consultants would be the practitioners, i.e., those people who are supposed to cure the pains of entrepreneurs. Again, comparing it to medical research it would actually make a lot of sense. Think about it: most medical doctors still practice medicine; those doing the research are most often also practitioners. And what is it that most entrepreneurship researchers do besides research? Exactly, they teach entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneurship educators are usually well adapted to the academic language and many of them read academic journals on a regular basis. The lack of audience then is one problem less to worry about. Instead, entrepreneurship scholars could focus more on (a) asking questions that are relevant to entrepreneurship educators and (b) finding out how research findings can support entrepreneurship education.
The latter calls for more and better research on entrepreneurship education . Instead of asking “What skills do entrepreneurs need?” or “What is necessary to grow a business?” researchers could start asking more “How can we foster the necessary skills of entrepreneurs?” or “How can we help entrepreneurs to grow their business?”
What I suggest is an alternative perspective on the different actors involved in entrepreneurship research. While there is no clear right or wrong answer here, I believe it is necessary to talk about who the practitioners and patients are for entrepreneurship research. From the two presented alternatives, I personally find the latter more attractive. It is only a small change of mindset to imagine that entrepreneurship educators are the practitioners and entrepreneurs their patients. But at the end of the day, we know that success can depend very much on small pivots of our initial assumptions.
