The Program
Research Programs
Four streams, organized by the question they each open onto. Use the research map to see the connections.
Knowledge Problems & Entrepreneurial Reasoning
From Algorithmic Hallucinations to Alien Minds
Addressing the Ideator's Dilemma through Entrepreneurial Work
Gen AI systems can generate extraordinarily creative ideas that often surpass human entrepreneurs — yet they also create two critical epistemic risks: algorithmic hallucinations (plausible but baseless ideas) and alien minds (breakthrough ideas from reasoning processes entrepreneurs cannot comprehend). The paper introduces the Ideator's Dilemma and develops a framework for addressing it through entrepreneurial work.
Are the Futures Computable?
Knightian Uncertainty & Artificial Intelligence
Explores the boundary between AI's extraordinary predictive capabilities and the domain of Knightian uncertainty — where four interrelated problems (actor ignorance, practical indeterminism, agentic novelty, and competitive recursion) create emergent challenges that redefine the relationship between human judgment and machine intelligence.
The House Believes That the Entrepreneurship Field Will Remain Nothing But a Troubled Industry: Against the Motion
A Defense of Pluralism in Entrepreneurship Research
Argues against the claim that entrepreneurship is a 'troubled industry,' making the case that the field's pluralistic nature is not a deficiency but an invigorating strength — and that paradigmatic convergence is the wrong standard for judging a field organized around irreducible uncertainty.
Do Androids Dream of Entrepreneurial Possibilities?
A Reply to Ramoglou et al.'s 'Artificial Intelligence Forces Us to Re-think Knightian Uncertainty'
Replies to Ramoglou et al.'s commentary on 'Are the Futures Computable?' — expanding on the epistemic challenges facing AI systems in grappling with Knightian uncertainty, and illuminating a path forward that moves beyond the false dichotomy between AI 'scoffers' and 'promoters.'
Chance, Probability, & Uncertainty at the Edge of Human Reasoning
What is Knightian Uncertainty?
Provides a definitive conceptual clarification of Knightian uncertainty — distinguishing it from risk, ambiguity, and other forms of incomplete knowledge — and maps the boundaries of human reasoning under conditions of genuine unknowability.
Non-Probabilistic Reasoning in Navigating Entrepreneurial Uncertainty
A Psychology of Religious Faith Lens
Draws on the psychology of religious faith to illuminate how entrepreneurs use non-probabilistic reasoning to navigate genuine uncertainty — reasoning that neither reduces to intuition nor to calculation.
Pivot, Persist, or Perish?
Knowledge Problems and the Extraordinarily Tight Boundary Conditions of Entrepreneurs as Scientists
Examines the extraordinarily tight boundary conditions under which the 'entrepreneur as scientist' model actually works, revealing how knowledge problems constrain the pivot-or-persist decision far more than lean startup theory acknowledges.
Bridging Worlds
The Intersection of Religion and Entrepreneurship as Meaningful Heterodoxy
Examines the intersection of religion and entrepreneurship as a form of meaningful heterodoxy — where unconventional combinations of sacred and commercial logics create novel forms of value.
Knowledge Problem (Mis)Diagnosis
and the Fate of Corporate Entrepreneurship Initiatives
Shows how misdiagnosing the type of knowledge problem facing a corporate entrepreneurship initiative leads to systematically inappropriate responses — and ultimately to initiative failure.
Stakeholder Engagement, Knowledge Problems, and Ethical Challenges
Examines how knowledge problems create ethical challenges in stakeholder engagement — when organizations cannot know what they need to know, ethical obligations to stakeholders become fundamentally complicated.
Entrepreneurial Action, Creativity, and Judgment in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
An early articulation of how artificial intelligence challenges foundational concepts in entrepreneurship theory — action, creativity, and judgment — setting the stage for the Cyborg Entrepreneurship research program.
Uncertainty, Knowledge Problems, & Entrepreneurial Action
A Review of the Knowledge Problems Literature
Reviews the multiple research streams constituting the literature on knowledge problems to identify critical boundary conditions of uncertainty as an analytical construct — addressing nearly a century of conflicting definitions, tautological measures, and unwitting conflation with more precise constructs along the spectrum of ignorance.
To Start or Not to Start?
Ability and Outcome Expectations in the Decision to Start a New Entrepreneurial Venture
Examines how ability expectations and outcome expectations jointly influence the decision to start a new venture, revealing that these two forms of expectation operate through distinct cognitive mechanisms.
AI & Deep Tech Entrepreneurship
The Acceleration of Artificial Intelligence
Rethinking Organisation and Work in an Era of Rapid Technological Change
AI is transforming the epistemic, interactional, and institutional foundations of contemporary organizations — yet existing research often treats 'AI' as a singular construct. This paper argues that predictive, generative, agentic, and embodied systems rely on different logics and produce distinct organizational outcomes, and develops a heuristic framework for differentiating among them.
From Algorithmic Hallucinations to Alien Minds
Addressing the Ideator's Dilemma through Entrepreneurial Work
Gen AI systems can generate extraordinarily creative ideas that often surpass human entrepreneurs — yet they also create two critical epistemic risks: algorithmic hallucinations (plausible but baseless ideas) and alien minds (breakthrough ideas from reasoning processes entrepreneurs cannot comprehend). The paper introduces the Ideator's Dilemma and develops a framework for addressing it through entrepreneurial work.
Digital Battlegrounds
The Power Dynamics & Governance of Contemporary Platforms
Reveals digital platforms as contested battlegrounds where stakeholder power struggles reflect and influence broader societal turbulence — from rentier capitalism and digi-serfdom to misinformation, data exploitation, and near-ungovernable algorithmic agents.
The Expectations Game
The Contingent Value of Hype as a Rhetorical Strategy in Resource Mobilization Processes among AI Startups
Analyzes 302 AI startups across 880 financing rounds to reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between hype and investor valuations — moderate hype maximizes value, but the tipping point shifts dramatically based on factors that enhance a startup's comprehensibility and credibility.
Are the Futures Computable?
Knightian Uncertainty & Artificial Intelligence
Explores the boundary between AI's extraordinary predictive capabilities and the domain of Knightian uncertainty — where four interrelated problems (actor ignorance, practical indeterminism, agentic novelty, and competitive recursion) create emergent challenges that redefine the relationship between human judgment and machine intelligence.
Do Androids Dream of Entrepreneurial Possibilities?
A Reply to Ramoglou et al.'s 'Artificial Intelligence Forces Us to Re-think Knightian Uncertainty'
Replies to Ramoglou et al.'s commentary on 'Are the Futures Computable?' — expanding on the epistemic challenges facing AI systems in grappling with Knightian uncertainty, and illuminating a path forward that moves beyond the false dichotomy between AI 'scoffers' and 'promoters.'
Entrepreneurial Action, Creativity, and Judgment in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
An early articulation of how artificial intelligence challenges foundational concepts in entrepreneurship theory — action, creativity, and judgment — setting the stage for the Cyborg Entrepreneurship research program.
Resource Mobilization & Business Model Design
Black Entrepreneurship
A Multilevel Process Model of Constrained Agency Across the Business Venturing Lifecycle
Develops a multilevel process model showing how Black entrepreneurs navigate a racialized entrepreneurial context where distinct constraints — from racialized context to entrepreneurial fatigue — emerge at each of seven stages across the business venturing lifecycle, constituting a pattern of 'constrained agency' that is not the same as 'no agency.'
The Expectations Game
The Contingent Value of Hype as a Rhetorical Strategy in Resource Mobilization Processes among AI Startups
Analyzes 302 AI startups across 880 financing rounds to reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between hype and investor valuations — moderate hype maximizes value, but the tipping point shifts dramatically based on factors that enhance a startup's comprehensibility and credibility.
Non-Probabilistic Reasoning in Navigating Entrepreneurial Uncertainty
A Psychology of Religious Faith Lens
Draws on the psychology of religious faith to illuminate how entrepreneurs use non-probabilistic reasoning to navigate genuine uncertainty — reasoning that neither reduces to intuition nor to calculation.
A Tale of Two Impacts
Entrepreneurial Action and the Gender-Related Effects of Economic Policy Uncertainty
Reveals how economic policy uncertainty has differential effects on male and female entrepreneurs, demonstrating that the macro-environment shapes entrepreneurial action through gendered pathways.
Getting a Foot in the Door
Trade Credit Strategies and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurial Internationalisation
Examines how entrepreneurial firms use trade credit as a strategic resource for internationalization — getting a 'foot in the door' of foreign markets through supplier relationships rather than equity financing.
Love Can't Buy You Money
Resource Exchange on Reward-Based Crowdfunding Platforms
Investigates the dynamics of resource exchange on reward-based crowdfunding platforms, revealing that social and relational motivations cannot substitute for economic value in resource mobilization.
Internationalization of Entrepreneurial Firms
Leveraging Real Options Reasoning through Affordable Loss Logics
Shows how entrepreneurial firms combine real options reasoning with affordable loss logics to navigate the uncertainty of international expansion — a strategy that neither framework alone can explain.
When Rising Tides Lift Some Boats More Than Others
Gender-Based Differences in the External Enablement of Entrepreneurship
Examines how external enablement mechanisms for entrepreneurship have differential effects across gender, revealing that policies designed to support entrepreneurship broadly may disproportionately benefit some groups over others.
Urban Farmers and Cowboy Coders
Re-Imagining Rural Venturing for the 21st Century
Re-imagines rural venturing for the digital age — showing how technology enables new forms of entrepreneurship that blur the urban-rural divide while creating place-based value in underserved communities.
COVID-19 and the Importance of Space in Entrepreneurship Research and Policy
Argues that COVID-19 revealed the critical importance of spatial and place-based considerations in entrepreneurship research and policy — considerations that digital-first perspectives had marginalized.
Parental Endowments versus Business Acumen
Assessing the Fate of Low-Tech, Service-Sector Spinouts
Investigates whether the success of service-sector spinouts depends more on parental endowments (resources inherited from the parent firm) or the entrepreneurial acumen of the founding team.
Bringing It All Back Home
Corporate Renewal through Spin-ins
Introduces the concept of 'spin-ins' — the reabsorption of entrepreneurial ventures back into their parent organizations — as a mechanism of corporate renewal.
A Review and Roadmap of Entrepreneurial Equity Financing
VC, CVC, Angel Investment, Crowdfunding, & Accelerators
A comprehensive review and roadmap of the entrepreneurial equity financing landscape — venture capital, corporate venture capital, angel investment, crowdfunding, and accelerators — mapping how the ecosystem has evolved and identifying critical research frontiers.
The Emergence of Dual-Identity Social Entrepreneurship
Its Boundaries and Limitations
Examines how social ventures navigate the tensions of dual identity — pursuing both social impact and financial sustainability — and maps the boundary conditions where this duality breaks down.
Turning Water into Wine?
Exploring the Role of Dynamic Capabilities in Early-Stage Capitalization Processes
Investigates whether early-stage ventures can use dynamic capabilities to transform limited resources into venture capital — 'turning water into wine' — and maps the boundary conditions of this process.
Becoming the Boss
Discretion and Post-Succession Success in Family Firms
Examines how successor discretion shapes post-succession outcomes in family firms, revealing that the latitude to act independently is a critical determinant of whether successions succeed or fail.
Factor Payments, Resource-Based Bargaining, and the Creation of Firm Wealth in Technology-Based Ventures
Examines how resource-based bargaining dynamics shape firm wealth creation in technology-based ventures, connecting resource acquisition costs to venture performance outcomes.
Perceived Institutional Ambiguity and the Choice of Organizational Form in Social Entrepreneurial Ventures
Examines how perceived institutional ambiguity influences social entrepreneurs' choices of organizational form — for-profit, nonprofit, or hybrid — revealing that ambiguity in the institutional environment is a key driver of structural decisions.
Methods & Infrastructure
The Acceleration of Artificial Intelligence
Rethinking Organisation and Work in an Era of Rapid Technological Change
AI is transforming the epistemic, interactional, and institutional foundations of contemporary organizations — yet existing research often treats 'AI' as a singular construct. This paper argues that predictive, generative, agentic, and embodied systems rely on different logics and produce distinct organizational outcomes, and develops a heuristic framework for differentiating among them.
Digital Battlegrounds
The Power Dynamics & Governance of Contemporary Platforms
Reveals digital platforms as contested battlegrounds where stakeholder power struggles reflect and influence broader societal turbulence — from rentier capitalism and digi-serfdom to misinformation, data exploitation, and near-ungovernable algorithmic agents.
The House Believes That the Entrepreneurship Field Will Remain Nothing But a Troubled Industry: Against the Motion
A Defense of Pluralism in Entrepreneurship Research
Argues against the claim that entrepreneurship is a 'troubled industry,' making the case that the field's pluralistic nature is not a deficiency but an invigorating strength — and that paradigmatic convergence is the wrong standard for judging a field organized around irreducible uncertainty.
Red Giants or Black Holes?
The Antecedent Conditions and Multi-Level Impacts of Star Performers
Sixty years of research on stars has witnessed wide-ranging conclusions about their impacts. This review develops a comprehensive framework revealing that high-achieving 'alpha-tail' individuals can function as red giants radiating value outward or black holes absorbing resources inward — and that the conditions determining which outcome prevails are identifiable across levels.
A Review and Roadmap of Entrepreneurial Equity Financing
VC, CVC, Angel Investment, Crowdfunding, & Accelerators
A comprehensive review and roadmap of the entrepreneurial equity financing landscape — venture capital, corporate venture capital, angel investment, crowdfunding, and accelerators — mapping how the ecosystem has evolved and identifying critical research frontiers.
Performance Deviations and Acquisition Premiums
The Impact of CEO Celebrity on Managerial Risk-taking
Examines how CEO celebrity status influences managerial risk-taking in acquisition decisions, showing that celebrity CEOs pay higher premiums — particularly after performance deviations.