Entrepreneurship as a family resemblance concept: A Wittgensteinian approach to the problem of defining entrepreneurship

Abstract

Why is consensus and clarity about the definition of entrepreneurship so elusive? The central premise of this paper is that we can gain a better understanding of the problem of defining entrepreneurship, of what it means to us as a field of research, and what we can hope to achieve by grappling with it, by substituting one question for another. The question we must start with to get a clear view is not “What is entrepreneurship?”, but rather “What sort of concept is entrepreneurship?” This reframing enables us to see that entrepreneurship is a family resemblance concept. It follows from this metacognitive insight, if it is correct, that all attempts to define entrepreneurship will be subject to counterexamples. This perspective is used to therapeutically alleviate emotional and behavioral problems in the field of entrepreneurship, and to offer practical suggestions for how to deal productively with paradigmatic diversity in the field.