In with the old, out with the new! The more we keep pushing for theoretical novelty, the less informative entrepreneurship theory will become

Abstract

Field-wide editorial expectations for each entrepreneurship study to offer new and interesting theoretical insights or explanations discourage entrepreneurship scholars to conduct the type of research needed to secure a replicable, generalizable, and thereby useful knowledge base. I address the paradoxical – yet predictable – long-term consequences of the relentless push for theoretical novelty on the ultimate informativeness of entrepreneurship theory, and ask the entrepreneurship research community to consider our collective and individual responsibilities in improving the systematic empirical scrutiny to which we subject our field’s core assumptions.