Advancing entrepreneurship as a design science: developing additional design principles for effectuation
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Advancing entrepreneurship as a design science: developing additional design principles for effectuation Stephen X. Zhang & Elco Van Burg
Accepted: 13 March 2019 # The Author(s) 2019
Abstract Scholars have advocated the development of entrepreneurship as a design science. One foundational challenge in a design science is to identify design principles. We argue that a particular field can draw on a design knowledge from different design sciences to develop design principles. In particular, we show that entrepreneurship research can learn from one branch of artificial intelligence studies called Bgenetic algorithm,^ which is a design field that creates solutions for complex, nonanalytical, and ill-structured problems. We illustrate the analogous transfer process by identifying complementary design principles for one exemplary entrepreneurship theory, namely effectuation. In turn, these additional effectual design principles further effectuation theory as a design science and help advance entrepreneurship as a nascent design science.
The authors are indebted to David Goldberg, the pioneer of genetic algorithms. David inspired this paper and helped the R&R process invaluably. Next to that, we thank special issue editor Martin Obschonka, the anonymous reviewers, as well as Joep Cornelissen, Dimo Dimov and seminar partipants at the 2016 Effectuation Conference in Bodø for their comments on earlier versions of this study. S. X. Zhang (*) The University of Sydney, Rm 4229, H70 - Abercrombie Building, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia e-mail: [email protected] E. Van Burg (*) Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected]
Keywords Design science . Effectuation . Genetic algorithms . Analogous transfer JEL classifications A12 . L21 . L22 . L26 . L29 . M13 . O32 . O31
1 Introduction Scholars have advocated that entrepreneurship research needs to be developed as a design science, in order to increase a focus on relevant (design) questions and to help with developing practical tools for managers (e.g., Jelinek et al. 2008; Romme 2003; Van de Ven 2007). In contrast to descriptive and explanatory sciences, design sciences focus on the process of making choices on what is possible and useful for the creation of possible futures, rather than on what currently prevails (Hevner et al. 2004; Romme 2003). For instance, design sciences bear the promise that they can help understand and provide guidance on how entrepreneurs design their ventures (Dimov 2016; Sarasvathy 2003; Venkataraman et al. 2012). Entrepreneurs are frequently confronted with such design choices (e.g., Baron et al. 1999), which carry significant consequences for their ventures (Baron et al. 2001; Wasserman 2012). Therefore, researchers have called to study the general design principles in the processes of designing new ventures (Dimov 2016; Romme and Endenburg 2006; Sarasvathy 2003). Despite repeated calls to study entrepreneurship as a design science, several authors have argued that
S. X. Zhang, E. Van Burg
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