Patzelt Holger - Trailblazing in entrepreneurship creating new paths for understanding the field

The Author(s) 2017

Dean A. Shepherd 1 and Holger Patzelt 2

Recently, the co-authors of this book met in Blairgowrie, Australia. Dean Shepherd showed Holger Patzelt the Back Beach where he had spent much of his youth. Dean recalled his childhood taking the trek from his house along the path through the coastal reserve to the rock pool and surf:

This description of bushwhacking is the Australian version of trailblazing, and metaphorically, entrepreneurs can also be trailblazers make a path through new or unsettled terrain upon which others may follow . That is, rather than follow the established path created by others, entrepreneurs often challenge the status quo by attempting to chart a new direction through the creation of new products, services, and/or processes. However, this book is not about trailblazing in coastal reserves or in product markets but about trailblazing in the field of entrepreneurship. We believe that scholars can be trailblazers, and in doing so, they can create new knowledge that others can build on to create additional knowledge and inform practice. Although this trailblazing may not have to deal with the poisonous snakes and spiders of Australia, it certainly has its fair share of obstacles, requires considerable effort, and may also lead to dead ends. Along with the challenges of creating a new trail are the intrinsic rewards from the process and the extrinsic rewards from the outcomes of making substantial contributions to knowledge. For scholars traveling along a well-worn path or a semi-worn path, the research outcomes are replication and incremental research, whereas trailblazing creates new knowledge through more radical ideas. Important in trailblazing is knowing where to start and having some knowledge about the terrain to be covered, the tools to help clear the path, and the potential gems that might be encountered along the way. The purpose of this book is to provide some insights into where trailblazing may be best directed, how, and with what potential outcomes. Specifically, this book offers a series of frameworks from which or within which we believe important research will emergeresearch that will have a substantial impact on our understanding of an entrepreneurial phenomenon and, thus, on the way we progress with subsequent entrepreneurship research.

We emphasize trailblazing (as opposed to taking existing paths) because we strongly believe that the future of the entrepreneurship field is promising but only if our research itself continues to be entrepreneurial. That being said, continuing to be entrepreneurial in our research may be more difficult than it initially appears. The success we have had thus far may lead us into a competency trap (Levitt & March,

As we consider the entrepreneurship fields future, our goal with this book is not to decry or replace Venkataramans (Shane & Venkataraman, ) description of entrepreneurships characteristic domain with our own; rather, our goal is to illuminate areas of unsettled terrain worthy of trailblazing work as a basis for the vitality of the fields future. Such trailblazing is likely to continuously alter what is considered to be entrepreneurship. As researchers, we should maybe focus less on whether our current work conforms to published domain statements within the entrepreneurship field because the field itself has likely already shifted. Our current work may make a more substantial contribution to the field by expanding its boundaries further by, for instance, opening up new terrain that then becomes part of the field of entrepreneurship (in retrospect).

Indeed, researchers from a variety of fields tend to focus narrowly on prevailing principles and themes, which can homogenize knowledge creation (in the literature) about the diverse world (Glynn, Barr, & Dacin, ) bemoaned that entrepreneurship research occasionally suffers from an abundance of studies articulated on different core principles and assumptionsa practice that has resulted in slow knowledge accumulation in the field. These arguments are consistent with those for the benefits of well-established paths.

While there is a great deal of value in knowledge-accumulation arguments, this paradigm-development approach seems to prefer parsimony and consistency above depth and diversity. As a result, this approach has the potential to generate an exceedingly narrow view (Burrell & Morgan, , p. 672)all with the aim of winning the paradigm war. In this context, the more exploratory is overtaken by the more exploitive. Indeed, this mindset is like putting up wire fences to dissuade people from leaving the path to create their own.