ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the implications of a conception of entrepreneurship that leaves the Ivory Tower behind and attempts to step into the ring of action, while also maintaining a certain level of abstraction. Therefore, entrepreneurial action operates at the interplay of purpose and vulnerability. They can reinforce or undermine one another, as in when strong purpose can elevate one’s threshold of vulnerability, or when strong sense of vulnerability can dampen one’s purpose. Indeed, Knightian uncertainty is considered a defining feature of the context of entrepreneurial action. Consider for a moment the subjective assessment of a situation from the point of view of the entrepreneur’s knowledge of it as well as the potential knowledge he or she could gain from others. By having to use the medium of language to do so, the entrepreneur inevitably becomes external to it and thus needs to project it on a spatial timeline.