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The Entrepreneurial Method: How Expert E...

Sarasvathy, Saras ...

Technical Note

The Entrepreneurial Method: How Expert Entrepreneurs Create New Markets

Sarasvathy, Saras D.

ENT-0073 | Published December 17, 2006 | 8 pages Technical Note

Collection: Darden School of Business

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This note reflects a new focus on "effectuation," the logic behind entrepreneurial expertise, which consists of tacit as well as learnable and teachable aspects of experience that are related to high performance in specific domains. Instead of taking either traits or circumstances as inputs and trying to explain variance in performance, the expertise lens focuses on understanding commonalties across a variety of experts in a single domain, given high levels of performance. Effectuation matters, not merely because expert entrepreneurs prefer an effectual logic over a causal one, but because of the details it offers of a comprehensive alternative frame for tackling entrepreneurial problems. Which frame entrepreneurs use influences how they formulate problems; what alternatives they perceive and generate; which constraints they accept, reject, and/or manipulate and how; and why they heed certain criteria over others in fabricating and implementing new solutions. Logical framing matters because it makes a real difference in the world and makes a world of difference in the reality entrepreneurs perceive and make possible or impossible.