ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on what scholars “pay attention” to (Langer, 1989) when we delve into research about entrepreneurship. What we already know brings to the forefront what we will see, or not see. I tend to read entrepreneurship scholarship “backward” by reading the list of references in an article or book first, because prior knowledge is reflected by them, and this prior knowledge provides the basis for the direction of the work (Latour, 1987, 1999; Sargent, 1997). I’m often surprised as to what other entrepreneurship scholars seem to ignore, or be oblivious to, when they create a list of references to serve as the background for their manuscripts. Often, the references cited seem to focus on such a narrow range of theoretical and empirical evidence that I wonder whether these articles reflect an “accurate” sense of the phenomenon explored. I believe that the lack of a more comprehensive and complicated knowledge of entrepreneurship (as reflected in what scholars reference), or the lack of a willingness to recognize a more comprehensive and complicated knowledge of entrepreneurship, may be detrimental to developing “better” (i.e., accurate, plausible, relevant; insightful; and useful to both academics and practitioners) entrepreneurship scholarship.
