Advancing entrepreneurship as a design science: developing additional design principles for effectuation

Stephen X Zhang,Elco Van Burg

doi:10.1007/s11187-019-00217-x

Stephen X Zhang, Elco Van Burg

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-019-00217-x

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Abstract

Scholars have advocated the development of entrepreneurship as a design science. One foundational challenge in a design science is to identify design principles. We argue that a particular field can draw on a design knowledge from different design sciences to develop design principles. In particular, we show that entrepreneurship research can learn from one branch of artificial intelligence studies called “genetic algorithm,” which is a design field that creates solutions for complex, nonanalytical, and ill-structured problems. We illustrate the analogous transfer process by identifying complementary design principles for one exemplary entrepreneurship theory, namely effectuation. In turn, these additional effectual design principles further effectuation theory as a design science and help advance entrepreneurship as a nascent design science.

Highlights

Scholars have advocated that entrepreneurship research needs to be developed as a design science, in order to increase a focus on relevant questions and to help with developing practical tools for managers (e.g., Jelinek et al 2008; Romme 2003; Van de Ven 2007)
To demonstrate the development of design principles through analogous transfer, we focused on further developing the theory of effectuation (Sarasvathy 2001, 2003), which already has a number of design science characteristics and we show that transferring design principles from the design sciences of artificial intelligence (AI), in particular, genetic algorithm, is very promising
To perform analogous transfer between genetic algorithms and effectuation, we briefly examine the process steps and the most essential design principles in genetic algorithms

Summary

Introduction

Scholars have advocated that entrepreneurship research needs to be developed as a design science, in order to increase a focus on relevant (design) questions and to help with developing practical tools for managers (e.g., Jelinek et al 2008; Romme 2003; Van de Ven 2007). Researchers have called to study the general design principles in the processes of designing new ventures (Dimov 2016; Romme and Endenburg 2006; Sarasvathy 2003). The identification of such design principles is a foundational task for the development of a design science (Parrish 2010; Romme 2003; Van Aken 2004)

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