Historiography and the excavation of nascent business venturing.

Van Lent, Wim; Hunt, Richard A.; Lerner, Daniel A.

Few facets of business venturing are more challenging to capture than nascent-stage venture creation. The principal reason for this is the inherent difficulty scholars face when addressing the dynamic interplay between individuals and opportunities. Post hoc perspectives of venture creation typically involve high "narrativity," characterized by structured, linear, teleological sense-making that tends to omit unreasoned and unintended facets of entrepreneurship. While narrativity is indispensable to new venture storytelling, it is also the quintessence of post hoc reality restructuring, which often excludes and invariably mutates key aspects of entrepreneurial action. To mitigate the data narrativity problem, we formulate a historiographical procedure designed to (a) reveal the internal and external stimuli that govern venture creation and (b) elicit deeper understanding of the unreasoned logics that also guide entrepreneurial action. For practical benefit, we assess this procedure through the lens of four archetypal research contexts, each featuring start-ups as "sites" of historiographical analysis: "wastelands," "ruins," "construction sites," and "goldmines." Our methodological roadmap enables a richer depiction of nascent-stage venturing. Plain English Summary: Historical approaches are key to accurately and comprehensively capturing the rich and varied dynamics of nascent-stage business venturing. Nascent-stage business venturing is messy and notoriously difficult to completely and accurately observe. Researchers are rarely, if ever, present when ideas are formed and initial actions are taken. Consequently, the vast majority of entrepreneurship research relies upon retrospective accounts of the founding process, which biases the portrayal of the meandering (or chaotic) journey that often characterizes entrepreneurship. With few exceptions, business venturing stories are curated narratives, exhibiting a high degree of "narrativity," meaning that they are structured and conveyed for the sake of sensemaking rather than accuracy. As such, they tend to accentuate intentionality and directionality, while largely omitting entrepreneurship's unreasoned and unintended elements. Addressing this problem, we draw upon historical tools and perspectives to develop a procedure that preserves the varied logics that underlie entrepreneurial action and invites consideration of start-ups as "sites" of historiographical analysis. This novel approach enables researchers and practitioners to examine nascent-stage venturing more comprehensively.

BUSINESS enterprises; NEW business enterprises; HISTORIOGRAPHY; BUILDING sites; ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Small Business Economics, 2023, Vol 61, Issue 1, p285

0921-898X

Academic Journal

10.1007/s11187-022-00691-w