Understanding entrepreneurship
With the help of research and science
There are many perspectives to entrepreneurship. It is an attitude. It is a career choice. It may be embedded in your personality, or even in genes. It is a set of skills. It is risk-taking. It runs in family. It is about commercialization of inventions. It requires long working days. It gives autonomy.
Entrepreneurship is nearly always also a personal story. Such stories can be inspiring and thought-provoking. At times, they teach invaluable lessons.
Understanding a phenomenon requires abilities and knowledge that are sufficient to think about it consistently and systematically, without biases.
Being able to do so supports astute and intelligent behaviour.
There is no right way to build abilities or acquire knowledge. As for me, I try to build understanding of entrepreneurship with the help of research and science.
To this end, I utilize, deploy, produce and apply economic analysis as well as management and entrepreneurship research.
My perspective to entrepreneurship — and related phenomena, such as new ventures, firm growth, start-up finance, competition, leadership, productivity and innovation — is, to the extent it is possible, evidence-based and scientific.
Taking the scientific perspective means, in practise, that I am a heavy user of the articles and research published in the following reputable and established journals (in alphabetical order):
- Academy Management Review / Journal / Perspectives
- American Economic Review
- Entrepreneurship Theory & Practise
- Journal of Business Venturing
- Journal of Economics and Management Strategy
- Journal of European Economic Association
- Journal of Finance
- Journal of Financial Economics
- Journal of Management
- Journal of Political Economy
- Management Science
- Organization Science
- Quarterly Journal of Economics
- Rand Journal of Economics
- Research Policy
- Review of Economic Studies
- Review of Economics and Statistics
- Review of Financial Studies
- Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal
- Strategic Management Journal
The work and results from which I draw are peer-reviewed. Scholarly peer review is not a panacea, but it exists to validate research findings and academic work.
From my own experience, I can confirm that the peer-review process has its problems. However, I can also attest that it indeed helps to improve the quality of published research.
What I try to do here is to share the knowledge, findings and insights that my colleagues and scholars produce and publish in scientific journals like the ones listed above.
If you feel that this might be of interest to you, please follow me at: Ari T. Hyytinen, PhD.
Ari Hyytinen, PhD, is professor of economics, living in Helsinki, Finland. I hike when I do not write, teach, or do research. I am on Twitter @artahy and on Linked-in here. You can follow me at: Ari T. Hyytinen, PhD.
