A Lean Approach to Entrepreneurial Theorizing

Abstract

AbstractWe offer lean scholarship as an approach to developing a portfolio of high-quality, high-impact papers. Indeed, our scholarly identity is typically generated and reinforced by our portfolio of published papers than by any one paper. By lean scholarship, we refer to iterative experimentation, stakeholder engagement, and collective learning in generating a portfolio of papers. Lean scholarship starts with an entrepreneurial mindset and involves creating a minimum viable paper, exploring its validity, and adding a plausible paper to one’s portfolio. Lean scholarship requires managing the portfolio by periodically deciding whether to persevere, pivot, or terminate each paper. Therefore, this chapter moves away from our emphasis on a single paper to think more broadly about the entrepreneurial process of constructing and managing a portfolio of entrepreneurship studies