key: cord-0059828-6ek1yoht
authors: Gupta, Vishal K.
title: Strategy
date: 2020-11-01
journal: Great Minds in Entrepreneurship Research
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-44125-8_6
sha: 43421963b4f844cba8ea18ae5b5bd7e69f4c37ff
doc_id: 59828
cord_uid: 6ek1yoht

Strategy and entrepreneurship are often seen as two sides of the same coin. A majority of entrepreneurship researchers consider strategy to be their second home, and many entrepreneurship studies are at the firm level. Based on official citations, four researchers have been recognized by the GAER for contributing to knowledge advancement at the interface of strategy and entrepreneurship: Arnold Cooper in 1997, Kathleen Eisenhardt in 2012, Shaker Zahra in 2014, and Sidney Winter in 2015. In effect, these four awardees contribute to both strategy and entrepreneurship research. This chapter presents the major insights of the scholars recognized for advancing strategy and entrepreneurship research, and identifies gaps and omissions that open new avenues for future inquiry.

1 As will be discussed later in this book, one could argue that the neglect of women in the entrepreneurship and strategy literatures is then akin to omitting Juliet from the balcony in Shakespeare's memorable drama (readers may find it informative that there really was no balcony in the original drama written by Shakespeare, but today it is difficult to imagine the famous play without the balcony).

Yet, not everyone views the relationship between entrepreneurship and strategic management favorably. Baker and Pollock (2007: 237) lament that "strategy is succeeding in its takeover of the academic field of entrepreneurship." Shane and Venkataraman (2001) are concerned about subjecting "entrepreneurship researchers to pressure to focus on the central questions" of strategic management inquiry. Others (e.g., Alvarez & Busenitz, 2001; Hitt, Ireland, Camp, & Sexton, 2001) argue that most-if not all-of the important topics that fall under the umbrella of entrepreneurship research are already examined by strategy scholars. From this perspective, a symbiotic relationship between entrepreneurship and strategic management is virtually impossible because there is not much that entrepreneurship inquiry can contribute to strategy research.

The precise nature of the relationship between strategy and entrepreneurship remains controversial. There is an ongoing debate regarding "the degree of interdependence versus the degree of independence" between entrepreneurship and strategic management (Ireland, 2007: 8) . Four scholars have been honored with the GAER for their research at the interface of strategy and entrepreneurship: Arnold Cooper (in 1998) , Kathleen Eisenhardt (in 2012) , Shaker Zahra (in 2015) , and Sidney Winter (in 2017) . Each of these scholars is now discussed in turn.

The 1997 GAER awardee, Arnold Cooper, was a pioneer in academic inquiry on strategic management and entrepreneurship (Kuratko, 2006) . The official GAER citation recognized Cooper for "his pioneering work on technical entrepreneurship, new technology-based firms and incubator organizations." Landström (2005) praised him for his wide-ranging research and sustained efforts to find answers for many of the fundamental questions that define research on entrepreneurship and technology management. Landström (2005) identifies four prominent streams in Cooper's research: (a) R&D in small manufacturing companies, technology-based firms, entrepreneurial heterogeneity, and new firm success. Cooper's work on R&D activity of small manufacturers was based on his dissertation, where he had reported a number of case studies about small manufacturing firms. At the time, the prevailing view emphasized large-firm advantage, including in R&D where they were believed to benefit from economies of scale. Cooper (1964) compared the cost of developing particular products for large and small firms. Based on interviews with key informants (specifically, men who had been section head or department head in the development organizations of one or more large companies, usually with at least several thousand employees, before starting their own firm, often in the same field), Cooper (1964) concluded that large corporations significantly outspend small firms in developing a new product. Based on an in-depth survey of five companies and interviews with 18 executives from other firms, Cooper (1966) identified three conditions that need to be met for small firms to develop new products: at least one creative technical person in the firm, an enthusiasm for product development as a major element of firm strategy, and a willingness to take risk in the firm. Cooper (1972) defined technology-based firms as companies emphasizing research and development or otherwise placing major emphasis on exploiting novel technical knowledge. At the time, new technology-based firms (NTBFs; Storey & Tether, 1998) were emerging in various parts of the US such as Minneapolis, Boston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Cooper (1973) identified three major drivers of the decision to start a NTBF: (a) attributes and characteristics of the entrepreneur, (b) external forces such as social norms and attributes toward entrepreneurship, and (c) the firm for which the entrepreneur worked prior to start a new enterprise (or the 'incubator organization'). Cooper (1970: 58) summarized the average NTBF in his research thus:

The firm is started by two founders, both of whom are in the middle thirties. One, usually can be described as the 'driving force.' He conceives the idea and enlists the other founder. They come from the same established organization, which is where they got to know each other. Either both are in engineering development or one is in engineering and the other is a product manager or in marketing. Often, they have achieved significant prior success, with titles such as section head or director of engineering being common. Their education includes BS and MS degrees, typically in electrical engineering.

Much, though not all, of Cooper's research on incubator organizations was based on information obtained about 250 high-technology firms founded on the San Francisco Peninsula during the 1960s. Data about the founding of these firms were gathered primarily through telephone interview (Cooper, 1972) . Representing virtually all of the technologybased firms started on the San Francisco peninsula in the first half of 1960 (Bruno & Cooper, 1982) , these 250 firms were founded by engineers or scientists, emphasized R&D, and produce a wide range of high-tech products from instruments and computer peripherals to semiconductors and microwave equipment. As such, they differed substantially from the 'typical' new venture in the US at the time, which was likely to be a retailing or service business started by people without much formal education or managerial experience (Cooper & Bruno, 1977) . Cooper (1971) reported that small firms (independent companies with less than 500 employees) or small subsidiaries of large firms had higher spin-off rates than large corporations. Spin-offs refer to new enterprises created by individuals exiting from existing companies to create companies of their own in the same product-market space (Garvin, 1983) . Spin-offs, or off-springs as they are sometimes called (Eriksson & Kuhn, 2006) , benefit from industry-specific knowledge (Helfat & Lieberman, 2002) and social capital (Furlan & Grandinetti, 2016) , which the founders bring with them from the former employer to the new firm. Cooper (1972) found that spin-offs are usually located in the vicinity of the parent firm, presumably because in more than 90% of new firms one or more founders were already working in the area (but see Egeln, Gottschalk, & Rammer, 2004) . Cooper (1998) offered several reasons for why entrepreneurs usually start their firms where they are already living and working: existing networks that provide connections to persuade others to help them, knowledge of local suppliers and markets, latitude to start part-time, and for the spouse to continue working so that there is some income for the family. Consequently, entrepreneurship in a region is encouraged by the pool of people already living there. Cooper and Bruno (1977) found that failure (which they defined as 'discontinuance') rates were significantly lower among NTBFs than non-technology firms. An interesting finding from this research was that a majority of firms were started by two or more full-time founders, and founder departure from the business was commonplace, even from successful businesses. The risk of failure is higher when the new firm is in a line of business where the founder has little prior professional experience. Bruno and Cooper (1982) reported that-by 1980-36.8% of these firms had discontinued, 32.4% had been acquired, and only 30.8% survived as independent firms. The typical NBTF-250 was acquired in its fourth to seventh year after founding by a publicly-owned mediumsized American firm already in the same industry as the acquired firm. Cooper (1985) examined 161 new firms discussed in national magazines, including Inc. magazine from January 1981 through November 1984 and in Venture magazine from January 1980 through June 1984, classifying them as growth-oriented firms with substantive potential or actual economic impact. Findings show that industrial firms were the incubator organizations for three-fourths of the new firms, and the spin-offs were generally in the same line of business and geographic area as the incubator organization.

In 1985, Cooper and his colleagues launched a large-scale survey study to capture the views, experiences, and attitudes of members of National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) who had reported recently becoming owners of their own business. The survey instrument had previously been pre-tested with 154 members of the NFIB to improve clarity (Gimeno, Folta, Cooper, & Woo, 1997) . Of the approximately 13,000 NFIB members surveyed, 4814 completed the questionnaire, with 2845 reported having started a business in 1984 or 1985 (Cooper, Dunkelberg, Woo, & Dennis, 1990) . Focusing on new entrepreneurs who had become business owners through start-up or acquisition, Cooper, Woo, and Dunkelberg (1988) examined entrepreneurs' perceived chances of success. There was evidence of over-optimism on the past of entrepreneurs (Cassar, 2010) , in that the business owners Cooper et al. (1988) sampled reported that their business was very likely to be successful, even as the same owners believed that businesses similar to their own were much less likely to succeed. Prior preparedness for the business was not associated with perceived chances for success. With the goal of identifying differences in characteristics of the entrepreneurs and in their processes of starting conditional of firm size, Cooper, Woo, and Dunkelberg (1989) focused on 1903 NFIB respondents who had started their own firm rather than buying out an existing business. In May 1986, a follow-up questionnaire was administered to these 1903 firms, resulting in 742 respondents. The entrepreneurs starting larger firms were found to be more educated, more experienced, more likely to have partners, and relied on external investors and professional advisors. Cooper, Folta, and Woo (1995) examined information search tendencies among 1176 NFIB entrepreneurs who started their own firm, finding that when entering fields familiar to them, novice entrepreneurs searched more than experienced entrepreneurs, but this pattern reversed when the business was in a field unfamiliar to the entrepreneur.

In May 1987, another survey was sent to the responding firms (Cooper, Gimeno-Gascon, & Woo, 1994) , resulting in a sample of 1053 firms (385 failed firms and 668 surviving and reporting firms). Results revealed that education, industry-specific know-how and financial capital, was positively related to firm survival and growth, but having parents who were entrepreneurs contributed only to survival and number of partners only to growth. Interestingly, women-owned firms were less likely to grow, but not less likely to survive, than male-owned firms. Gimeno et al. (1997) proposed the idea of performance threshold in small businesses, describing it as the level of performance below which the firm will be dissolved, to explain the persistence of underperforming firms (or 'zombie firms'; Blažková & Dvouletý, 2020) . Gimeno et al. (1997) conceived organizational exit as a choice depending on owners' human capital attributes (e.g., management experience) and subjective determination of threshold performance. Based on 1547 NFIB firms participating in the three-wave data collection, Gimeno et al. (1997) found that entrepreneurs who are more intrinsically motivated and have a family history in entrepreneurship are simply more accepting of a lower level of economic performance to remain in business. Thus, the finding that discontinuance rate among new firms is lower than expected (Cooper et al., 1990) may be driven by the subjective value that entrepreneurs get from their business.

There is a long history of typologies in entrepreneurship research. Typologies are generally useful for studying complex issues as researchers can categorize entrepreneurs into discrete categories, which allows detailed analysis and comparison between groups of subjects (Tang, Tang, & Lohrke, 2008) . They bring out more vividly key differences between various forms of entrepreneurial activity and help explore 'messy' phenomena like entrepreneurship (Gupta, Wieland, & Turban, 2019) . The information value of typologies comes from maximizing 'metacontrast' such that between-group differences are larger and more salient than within-group variations. Woo, Cooper, and Dunkelberg (1991) distinguished between typologies developed from 'special characteristics' (or small number of attributes) and 'general characteristics' (or comprehensive number of attributes), using data from 510 NFIB entrepreneurs in the retail and personal services sectors to examine the robustness of the craftsmen-opportunist typology (Smith & Miner, 1983) . Woo et al. (1991) found that different classification criteria produced different groupings of entrepreneurs, which raises concerns about the universality and validity of entrepreneurial types. Thus, while typologies may have the benefit of revealing patterns in complex phenomena (Gupta et al., 2019) , the results of studies classifying entrepreneurs into different types need to be interpreted with caution.

The 2012 GAER awardee, Kathleen Eisenhardt, was recognized for "work on strategy, strategic decision making, and innovation in rapidly changing and highly competitive markets." She is among the most published scholars in strategic management (Furrer, Thomas, & Goussevskaia, 2008) , with several of her papers (namely, Eisenhardt [Eisenhardt 1989a , 1989b , Eisenhardt and Tabrizi [1995] , and Eisenhardt and Martin [2000] ) ranked among the most influential strategy articles over the first 25 years of the field's existence. She is also ranked among the most productive entrepreneurship scholars over the 2000-2015 period (Gupta, Ibrahim, Guo, & Markin, 2016) . Several of Eisenhardt's papers (specifically, Eisenhardt [1989a] , Eisenhardt and Tabrizi [1995] , and Brown and Eisenhardt [1995] ) are among the most influential publications in innovation research (Shafique, 2013) . Clearly, Eisenhardt's work is boundary-spanning, covering a wide range of topics and informing researchers across many different academic areas (Carlsson, 2013) . Eisenhardt has been ranked #17 on the list of most published strategy researchers (Furrer et al., 2008) and #8 among most published entrepreneurship researchers (Gupta et al., 2016) . 2 To understand Eisenhardt's research, it is helpful to start with Bourgeois and Eisenhardt (1988) , her first major scholarly journal publication in the area of entrepreneurship. Rajagopalan, Rasheed, and Datta (1993) highlighted two main findings of Bourgeois and Eisenhardt (1988) 's examination of strategic decision processes in four microcomputer firms: in high-velocity environments, (a) "comprehensiveness, decision speed, CEO power, bold strategies, and incremental implementation lead to better performance" (p. 371), and (b) "successful firms make quick decisions, have powerful CEO's & TMT's, and seek risk and innovation but execute safe, incremental implementation" (p. 361). For many scholars (e.g., Carpenter, Geletkanycz, and Sanders, 2004) , a key takeaway from Bourgeois and Eisenhardt (1988) is that not only do complex decision processes characterize the interactions of many TMTs, they may also lead to more successful outcomes. Snow and Thomas (1994) lauded Bourgeois and Eisenhardt (1988) for combining "three different field methods -observation, interviewing, and questionnaires." Combined with two other publications (Eisenhardt, 1989a; , Bourgeois and Eisenhardt (1988) offered three key ideas:

1. Focus on strategic decisions and the processes underlying these decisions. Following Mintzberg, Raisinghani, and Theoret (1976: 246) , strategic decisions were defined as conscious choices made by top management, which are "important, in terms of the actions taken, the resources committed, or the precedents set." Furthermore, strategic decisions were "infrequent" and "critically affect[ed] organizational health and survival" (Eisenhardt & Zbaracki, 1992: 17) . 2. Spotlight on high-velocity environments. Building on prior work on 'dynamism' (Dess & Beard, 1984) and 'volatility' (Bourgeois, 1985) , high-velocity environments were conceived as those dynamic and volatile industries that are also characterized by "sharp and discontinuous change" (Eisenhardt & Bourgeois, 1988: 738) . Eisenhardt (1989a: 544) explained that in high-velocity environments, "changes in demand, competition, and technology are so rapid and discontinuous that information is often inaccurate, unavailable, or obsolete." Bourgeois and Eisenhardt (1988) offered microcomputers, airlines, and banking as examples of high-velocity environments, 3 and contrasted these with "cyclical industries such as forest products and machine tools" that are high on dynamism and volatility, but do not see sharp and discontinuous change. 3. Pursue embedded multiple case designs to generate theoretical insights. Drawing on Yin's (1984) work, this approach involved "several units of analysis" (i.e., embedded) and treated "a series of cases as a series of experiments" (i.e., multiple cases), with "each 3 Banking was subsequently dropped as an example of high-velocity industry . As Eisenhardt recounted recently, when she started her research, both industries-banking and computing-were being disrupted, and she and her advisor (Jay Bourgeois, a newly minted PhD at the time) debated which one of the two to study (Bodner, Song, & Szulanski, 2019) . Because of her engineering background, Eisenhardt turned toward studying the computing industry in the late 1970s and early 1980s, just as the personal computer was taking off. case serving to confirm or disconfirm the inferences drawn from the others" (Eisenhardt, 1989c: 545) . Originally proposed in Eisenhardt (1989a) , Eisenhardt and her colleagues then published "a continuous stream" of articles that elaborated "the logic of the method and the rhetoric underpinning" it (Langley & Abdallah, 2011: 204) , culminating in what is generally referred to as the 'Eisenhardt style' of inquiry (Javadian, Dobratz, Gupta, Gupta, & Martin, 2020) .

These three elements-either together or individually-informed much of Eisenhardt's subsequent research (e.g., Brown & Eisenhardt, 1997; Hallen & Eisenhardt, 2012; Ozcan & Eisenhardt, 2009) . Her most cited work to date is Eisenhardt (1989c) , which builds on Glaser and Straus (1967) to describe the process of building theory from case studies, starting from developing specific research questions all the way to reaching closure through 'theoretical saturation.' Case studies, Eisenhardt and Graebner (2007) explain, are rich, empirical descriptions of particular instances of a phenomenon typically based on a variety of data sources. Eisenhardt (1991: 620) identified two central arguments in Eisenhardt (1989c) : "multiple cases are a powerful means to create theory because they permit replication and extension among individual cases … [and]…the importance of methodological rigor" (see Dyer and Wilkins [1991] for an opposing perspective). Eisenhardt (1989c: 545) argued that "between 4 and 10 cases usually works well. With fewer than 4 cases, it is often difficult to generate theory with much complexity, and its empirical grounding is likely to be unconvincing, unless the case has several mini-cases within it." With 16250+ WoS citations till the time of this writing, Eisenhardt (1989c) is widely considered a seminal methodological reference for case study research both within the field of management and beyond (Ravenswood, 2011) . Langley and Abdallah (2011: 201) explain that with its "positivist epistemology" and emphasis on "nomothetic theoretical propositions," Eisenhardt (1989c) laid the foundation for a distinct mode of qualitative inquiry. Javadian et al. (2020) examined the influence of the 'Eisenhardt style' on qualitative entrepreneurship research, presenting Santos and Eisenhardt (2009) as a relatively recent exemplar of this approach. While Eisenhardt has been a prolific and impactful scholar with significant contributions to entrepreneurship research, only a subset of her work "can be directly and explicitly labeled as 'entrepreneurship' research" (Carlsson, 2013: 798) . Of these, Brown and Eisenhardt (1997) have been most influential with 1600 + WoS citations, although it does not appear as a core article in strategy or entrepreneurship research (Ferreira, Fernandes, & Ratten, 2016; Nerur et al., 2008) or entrepreneurship inquiry (Ferreira, Reis, & Miranda, 2015) . Brown and Eisenhardt (1997) report an inductive study of multiple-product innovation in six firms in the high-velocity computer industry, with three that were successful and three that were not. The main finding was that managers of firms with successful multiple-product development portfolios balanced between mechanistic and organic structures by combining explicit priorities and responsibilities with clear communication and the freedom to improvise within existing projects. Another key finding is that managers of successful product portfolios carefully managed the transition between the present and the future, while the link between past and future projects was usually an afterthought for the less successful firms. Eisenhardt and Tabrizi (1995) too looked at product innovation, delving into competing theoretical models for firms that develop product quickly to adapt to environmental changes. Using data from 72 product development projects from 36 Asian, US, and European firms operating in the high volatility computer industry, Eisenhardt and Tabrizi (1995) develop an experiential model to explain fast adaptation. In their model, fast adaption requires a powerful project leader who oversees a multifunctional team with an experiential strategy of multiple design iterations, extensive testing, and frequent project milestones. Carlsson (2013) considers Schoonhoven (1990, 1996) to be among Eisenhardt's most influential works for entrepreneurship research. Both studies rely on the same data: semiconductor firms launched in the US between 1978 and 1985. Yet, they deal with different research questions. Eisenhardt and Schoonhoven (1990) , which Ferreira et al. (2015) ranked among the top 30 entrepreneurship works in the 2001-2005 time period, examined antecedents of new firm growth, an issue that is at the heart of modern entrepreneurship research. At the time, few scholars were trying to understand why some firms, but not others, manage to grow (Davidsson, Delmar, & Wiklund, 2006) , and the research literature in this area was scarce . Eisenhardt and Schoonhoven (1990) found that founding management team and market stage had significant main and interaction effects on firm growth, and these effects grew stronger over time. Eisenhardt and Schoonhoven (1996) sought to understand why firms form strategic alliances. Given the rapid proliferation of strategic alliances during the 1980s and 1990s (Dyer, Kale, & Singh, 2001; Koka & Prescott, 2002) , there is considerable interest in understanding the drivers of alliance formation (Dacin, Oliver, & Roy, 2007) . Eisenhardt and Schoonhoven (1996) found that strategic alliances happen when firms are in vulnerable strategic positions and strong social positions. For a firm, a vulnerable strategic position is when it competes in a highly competitive or an emergent industry or when it is pioneering technological disruption. Conversely, a firm is in a strong social position when it is helmed by large, experienced, and well-connected top management teams. Katila, Rosenberger, and Eisenhardt (2008) examine conditions under which entrepreneurial firms choose investment partners with high potential for misappropriation over less opportunistic partners. Data were obtained from a sample of 701 ventures in five technology-focused industries (communications, software, electronics, biotechnology, and medical) over a 25-year period (1979 to 2003) , which was also used for Hallen, Katila, and Rosenberger's (2014) work on of equity tie formation between young firms and established corporate 'sharks.' Katila et al. (2008) find both cooperative and competitive tendencies in the alliances. Specifically, new firms enter into alliances with larger players with the expectation of substantive manufacturing and financial resources. At the same time, they are also prepared to defend themselves from potential misappropriation through the use of trade secrets and timing the relationship to coincide with later funding rounds. Hallen and Eisenhardt (2012) examine the strategies by which managers form ties in a sample of nine young Internet security ventures (see also Hallen [2008] ). Hallen and Eisenhardt (2012) find that tie formation is facilitated for firms where executives engage in 'casual dating' (a phrase they use to describe a "catalyzing strategy" that involves "informal but deliberate, repeated meetings with a few potential partners prior to attempting to form a formal tie").

Drawing on eight technology collaborations between ten organizations in the global computing and communications industries between 2001 and 2006, Davis and Eisenhardt (2011) examine why only some strategic alliances yield technological innovations. Notably, all sample companies had ample prior alliance experience: many had previous alliances and dedicated alliance function, for example (Eisenhardt, 2019) . Davis and Eisenhardt (2011) find that the key to successful alliances was 'rotating leadership,' where partnering firms constructively alternate decision control. 4 Ozcan and Eisenhardt (2009) were interested in high-performing alliance portfolios (defined as a firm's set of direct ties), which they studied in a sample of six rival ventures in the wireless gaming industry. The US wireless gaming industry, which is characterized by high interdependence among several types of firms in the industry, emerged with scattered attempts to create games for wireless phones (Ozcan, 2018) . Ozcan and Eisenhardt (2009) find that executives who form simultaneous ties with multiple partners and keep an eye toward the industry as a whole are more likely to have the kind of high-performing alliance portfolios that yield superior performance for the focal firm.

Some other papers are also worth discussing here, albeit briefly as they do not pertain to entrepreneurship research directly. Eisenhardt (1989b) provides an in-depth review of agency theory, which seeks to explain what happens when one party (principal) delegates work to another (agent) to perform that work. Interestingly, Eisenhardt's doctoral thesis (see Eisenhardt [1985 Eisenhardt [ , 1988 ) was among the "first empirical studies on agency theory," which was "really taking off" at the time (Bodner, Song, & Szulanski, 2019: 364) . Brown and Eisenhardt (1995) organize the extant empirical literature on product development into three broad streams (namely, rational plan, communication web, and disciplined problem solving), synthesizing their findings into a research model explaining product development success. Eisenhardt and Martin (2000) discuss dynamic capabilities, which have emerged as an important stream of research in the entrepreneurship literature (Zahra, Sapienza, & Davidsson, 2006) . Eisenhardt and Santos (2002) delve into the knowledge-based view, which sees firms as "entities for producing and exchanging knowledge" in the market (Gupta, Niranjan, & Markin, 2020: 2) . Davis, Eisenhardt, and Bingham (2007) focus whether, when, and how simulations-which they define as methodology "for using computer software to model the operation of 'real world' processes, systems, or events" (p. 481)-can be used for theory development in organizational research. Subsequently, Davis, Eisenhardt, and Bingham (2009) used the simulation approach to explore the tension between too much and too little structure in dynamic environments. Garg and Eisenhardt (2017) looked at how first-time venture CEOs involved their board in formulating strategy, collecting rich longitudinal data on CEOs, boards, and top management teams through observations, interviews, and archival access. As Eisenhardt (2019: 23) recounted, "it's very challenging to gain entry into corporate boardrooms," but her co-author "was very fortunately and skillfully able to penetrate these companies…attend many board meetings and meet with board members and executives many times…[so they had] extensive data over time… to understand the CEO-board relationship from the CEO lens." Eisenhardt (2019: 24) describes her research as 'abductive,' which involves "generating plausible, 'first suggestions' about phenomena and their explanations on the basis of observations from one's data" (Bamberger, 2019: 104) . Sarasvathy (2001: 257) defines abduction as "creating new hypotheses purely from imagination, as opposed to deducing them from first principles or axioms [deduction] or inducing them from data or empirical findings [induction] ." For Heckman and Singer (2017: 298) abductive research is about "generating and revising models, hypotheses, and data analyzed in response to surprising findings." The American philosopher-logician Charles Sander Peirce formally introduced the concept of 'abduction' as follows: "The surprising fact, C, is observed. But if A were true, C would be a matter of course. Hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true" (Kapitan, 1990: 499) . Leamer (1983) likened abduction to the Sherlock Holmes methodology, guided by the principle that "[i]t is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence" (Doyle, 1891) . As such, abduction is a sort of formalized guesswork where the proposed supposition is plausible (Niiniluoto, 1999) . While anyone can make guesses about an observed phenomenon, 5 knowledge claims in science require that the initial conjecture be "subject to further test" (Schurz, 2008: 205) . Given that abductive research makes only the weakest of knowledge claims (Bamberger, 2019) , replicability and generalizability may be even more salient for abduction than is the case for other forms of scientific inquiry. Eisenhardt (1989c: 546) embraces the notion of generalizability as reflected in the contention that her scholarship "is directed toward the development of testable hypotheses and theory which are generalizable across settings." Much of Eisenhardt's research focuses on technologyoriented high-growth firms located in the Silicon Valley and its adjoining areas. Such firms attract considerable academic attention, popular interest, and government support (Gupta et al., 2019; Marlow, 2002) , but comprise a very small fraction of total entrepreneurial activity in society. Eisenhardt (2019: 18) recognizes the merits of research that reflects the reality not "just for the tech companies," but also for firms "in the 'less-tech' sectors" of the economy. Yet, it is unclear if findings from technology-oriented companies are generalizable to similar firms in other parts of the world (Isaak, Isaak, & Zybura, 2016) , let alone to firms in other industries. Silicon Valley has attracted considerable interest from policy-makers and communities that have tried to access its 'secret recipe' and replicate it elsewhere (Sturgeon, 2003) , but none have had much success so far (Coletti, 2010) . As such, it would be interesting to examine how well research conducted on managerial issues using data from Silicon Valley firms generalizes to other similar firms or even to firms in other industries. While some believe that qualitative inquiry need not be assessed on the metric of generalizability (Smith, 2018) , Wolcott (1995: 132) reminded us that qualitative researchers "cannot escape the nagging question of generalization." As Hallen and Eisenhardt (2012: 39) contend, the goal of organizational research is "accurate, parsimonious, and generalizable" findings that are valid across time and space (see also Ozcan and Eisenhardt [2009] ). the novel coronavirus and it would not make athletes sick (Magalhaes & Forero, 2020) . Tanzania's John Magufuli encouraged people to go pray in churches and mosques to quell a 'satanic' virus that can only be cured by divine intervention (Bariyo & Parkinson, 2020) . Some of these claims may prove to be true, or perhaps none or maybe all. It seems the more perplexing the observed phenomena, the more variety of guesses will be generated about it.

Shaker Zahra, the 2014 GAER awardee, is widely recognized for the 'diversity' of his research, whether in research topics, methodology, or the phenomena of interest (Audretsch, 2015) . The official GAER citation for Zahra honored him "for his work on the role of corporate entrepreneurship in knowledge creation, absorption, and conversion." Several of Zahra's papers (e.g., Zahra & Covin, 1995; Zahra, Ireland, & Hitt, 2000; Zahra et al., 2006) are considered highly influential in the area of strategic entrepreneurship (Ferreira et al., 2016) . 6 Zahra is consistently considered among the most published researchers in entrepreneurship, both in general management journals (Gupta et al., 2016) and in specialty field journals (Markin, Swab, & Marshall, 2017) .

To understand Zahra's work, it is helpful to start with a brief discussion of corporate entrepreneurship. 7 At a basic level, the term corporate entrepreneurship (CE) refers to the entrepreneurial behaviors and activities of established corporations. Sharma and Chrisman (1999: 18) define it as "… the process whereby an individual or a group of individuals, in association with an existing organization, create a new organization, or instigate renewal or innovation within that organization." It involves, Phan et al. (2009) explain, exploiting new opportunities in and by large 6 The literature is not clear about the interrelationships between strategic entrepreneurship and corporate entrepreneurship. For Phan, Wright, Ucbasaran, and Tan (2009: 199) , strategic entrepreneurship is one part of corporate entrepreneurship, specifically the "renewal activities that enhance a corporations' ability to compete and take risks" (see also Kuratko and Audretsch [2013] ). Others (e.g., Hitt, Ireland, Sirmon, & Trahms, 2011: 59) see corporate entrepreneurship as a part of the broad field of strategic entrepreneurship that brings together "entrepreneurship's opportunity-seeking behaviors and strategic management's advantage-seeking behaviors" for the benefit of all organizations, small and large. 7 Zahra (2018) discusses that his early research was in the area of strategic management, focusing on governance of large public corporations (e.g., Pearce and Zahra, 1991; Zahra and Pearce, 1989 ) and technology strategy (e.g., Zahra & Covin, 1993; Zahra & Das, 1993) . Even as Zahra's research gradually moved toward more mainstream entrepreneurship topics, his interest in strategy continued (e.g., George, Zahra & Wood, 2002; Haeussler, Patzelt, & Zahra, 2012; Kelley, Ali, & Zahra, 2013; Uotila, Maula, Keil, & Zahra, 2009 ). This is not surprising, given that Zahra has been a vocal advocate for research at the strategy-entrepreneurship nexus (Zahra, 2018; Zahra & Dess, 2001) , a position that has not always gone down well with other leading entrepreneurship researchers (e.g., Shane & Venkataraman, 2001). firms. For many scholars, CE is "a powerful antidote to large company staleness, lack of innovation, stagnated top-line growth, and the inertia that often overtakes the large, mature companies of the world" (Thornberry, 2001: 526) . Formalized most prominently in Burgelman's (1983) work, CE is now an established and ever-growing area of academic inquiry (Bierwerth, Schwens, Isidor, & Kabst, 2015) .

When Zahra started working in the area of CE, the "the literature consisted mostly of case studies, descriptive reports, and testimonials" (Zahra, 2015: 727) . Based on the notion that entire "firms per se act in entrepreneurial manners" (Covin & Miles, 1999 : 49 italics original), Zahra (1991) defined CE as "the process of creating new business within established firms to improve organizational profitability and enhance a company's competitive position … or the strategic renewal of existing business." At the time, others had defined CE in different ways, such as firm-level efforts toward product innovation or market development (Jennings & Lumpkin, 1989) , disposition toward risk-taking, proactiveness, and innovativeness (Covin & Slevin, 1989 ), among others (e.g., Karagozoglu and Brown; 1988; Nielsen, Peters, & Hisrich, 1985) . Zahra (1991) found that as environmental dynamism and hostility increased, companies emphasized CE more. Zahra (1993) elaborated that it was the perceived-rather than objective-attributes of the environment that encouraged CE, as it is managers' perceptions that "play an important role in shaping their responses to the environment" (Sharfman & Dean, 1991: 682) . Zahra (1993) also introduced an empirically grounded four-pronged typology of the perceived environment ('dynamic growth,' 'hostile and competitive but technologically rich,' 'hospitable, growthrich,' and 'static and impoverished' environments), but it does not seem to have found traction in the literature. Zahra (1991) used a nine-item scale to measure CE, of which Zahra and Covin (1995) picked seven-and attribute them to Miller and Friesen (1982) -to gauge CE. Zahra (1991) found that an emphasis on CE was associated with superior accounting performance, which is also how Zahra and Covin (1995) operationalized firm performance, finding that the strength of the CE-performance relationship increases over time. Andersen (2010) considers Zahra and Covin (1995) to be among the most methodologically rigorous evidence for positive performance effects associated with firm-level entrepreneurship. Gupta and Gupta (2015) highlighted Zahra and Covin (1995) as the first successful effort to capture the relationship between firm-level entrepreneurship and performance over time. A meta-analysis of 42 studies with 43 independent samples heightens confidence in Zahra and Covin's (1995) findings: Bierwerth et al. (2015) show that CE was positively associated with firm performance, such that the positive effect was stronger for subjective performance than for objective performance. Based on Guth and Ginsberg (1990) , Zahra (1996) introduced a three-dimensional conceptualization of CE as a combination of strategic renewal, venturing, and innovation, which has since become popular in the literature (Bierwerth et al. 2015) .

While there is broad consensus around the idea that large firms need to behave entrepreneurially to compete with nimble upstarts (Kuratko, Hornsby, & Hayton, 2015) , in practice the CE concept is "confusingly used by researchers" to explain a large variety of organizational phenomena (Christensen, 2004: 301) . More than twenty years back, Covin and Miles (1999: 47) lamented that when scholars "talk about corporate entrepreneurship, they are often talking about different phenomena," a concern that remains "as valid today as it was then" (Schindehutte, Morris, Kuratko, & Hoskisson, 2018: 12) . Furthermore, much empirical work has been done around CE, but it has yielded little useful knowledge as the vast majority of research involves cross-sectional investigations. For example, Bierwerth et al. (2015) 's meta-analysis finds that the magnitude of the strength of the CE-performance relationship is about 0.13 to 0.24, which is lower than the mean effect size across 196 meta-analyses in management research (Aguinis, Dalton, Bosco, Pierce, & Dalton, 2011) . Unfortunately, studies that comprise the canon of CE research suffer heavily from endogeneity issues, so that we do not really know if CE causes superior performance, or higher performance boosts CE, or both CE and firm performance are caused by a third factor invisible at this time. Consequently, the accumulated knowledge around CE has made little progress over time, offering scarce evidence-based value to managers interested in heeding the "the entrepreneurial imperative of the twenty-first century" (Kuratko, 2009) . Zahra, Nielsen, and Bogner (1999) focus on the knowledge-creation processes within a firm's CE activities, laying the foundation for much of Zahra's later work that considered "knowledge in the context of CE" (Zahra, 2015: 729) . Within this stream of work that delves into knowledge issues within CE, Zahra and George (2002a) may be one of the most "important and path-breaking" contributions (Audrestch, 2015) . Zahra and George (2002a) sought to clarify and extend the concept of absorptive capacity introduced and developed by Cohen and Levinthal (1989 , 1990 , three papers that together laid the foundation for much of the subsequent research in this area (Apriliyanti & Alon, 2017; Zou, Ertug, & George, 2018) . Cohen and Levinthal (1989) define absorptive capacity as a firm's ability to "identify, assimilate, and exploit knowledge from the environment." Cohen and Levinthal (1990) use research on individual cognitive structures and problem solving to develop a richer explanation of the absorptive capacity construct, putting more emphasis on the underlying processes. Cohen and Levinthal (1994) expand the notion of absorptive capacity from the firm's ability to exploit new external knowledge to also encompass the capability to predict more accurately the nature of future technological advances.

Concerned that the absorptive capacity literature was plagued by definitional ambiguity and divergent conceptualization, Zahra and George (2002a) propose a reconceptualization of the construct, marking a significant turn in Zahra's subsequent scholarship (Silva, 2015) . For Zahra and George (2002a) , absorptive capacity is a dynamic capability comprising of knowledge acquisition and assimilation dimension (potential capacity) and a knowledge transformation and exploitation dimension (realized capacity). Thus, absorptive capacity is comprised of four distinct-but complementary-competencies: acquisition, assimilation, transformation, and exploitation (Daspit & D'Souza, 2013) . Firms cannot apply external knowledge without acquiring it first, and yet, not all firms that acquire and assimilate external knowledge are able to transform and apply it (Lin, Wu, Chang, Wang, & Lee, 2012) . The extent to which absorptive capacity can be used in a specific situation to assimilate and commercially apply external knowledge is the situation-specific realized absorptive capacity of a firm (Lane, Koka, & Pathak, 2006) . Notably, Zahra and George's (2002a) reconceptualization did not go unchallenged as Todorova and Durisin (2007) disagreed with transformation as a distinct dimension of absorptive capacity and considered the constructs of potential and realized absorptive capacity to be ambiguous and unclear. Flatten, Engelen, Zahra, and Brettel (2011) used German data to develop a 14-item scale capturing the four aspects of absorptive capacity and finding that transformation was indeed a dimension district from acquisition, assimilation, and application. Interestingly, Zahra and George (2002a: 191) also introduce the idea of 'absorptive capacity efficiency' as the ratio of realized to potential absorptive capacity ('RACAP to PACAP,' in their terms).

There is no doubt that a large body of research now exists on the issue of absorptive capacity (Apriliyanti & Alon, 2017) . However, scholars have raised concerns that a large number of papers where absorptive capacity is included in the abstract, title, or keywords actually have little to do with absorptive capacity (Lane et al., 2006; Marabelli & Newell, 2014) . Furthermore, empirical research on absorptive capacity has proved to be non-cumulative as "different definitions have often led to different operationalizations" (Duchek, 2013) . The multi-level nature of absorptive capacity is conceptually appealing, but difficulties associated with collecting rich individual and firm-level data within the same study means that empirical research has lagged behind theoretical development (Marabelli & Newell, 2014) . Patterson and Ambrosini (2015: 79) recognize that "although absorptive capacity is highly cited, it is still nascent and lacks robust empirical evidence and measures." Clearly, much work needs to be done in the area of absorptive capacity, as despite three decades of research in this area, academic understanding of this important construct remains rudimentary and fragmented. Audretsch (2015) observes that Zahra's research "has been recognized by and had an impact on a broad spectrum of scholars spanning a wide range of fields and disciplines throughout the social sciences." As such, Zahra has also made substantive contributions to many other research streams that are worth mentioning here, such as family business (e.g., Zahra, 2003; Zahra and Sharma, 2004) , dynamic capabilities (e.g., Zahra et al. 2006) , and social entrepreneurship (e.g., Zahra, Gedajlovic, Neubaum, and Shulman, 2009 ). Based on analyzing 291 articles published in 30 management journals between , Debicki, Matherne, Kellermanns, and Chrisman (2009 rank Zahra among the most prolific family business researchers. Mustakallio, Autio, and Zahra (2002) use survey data from 192 Finnish family firms to find that the strength of shared vision among family members is positively associated with social interaction, and strategic decision quality and commitment. Zahra (2003) reports a mail survey of 409 manufacturing firms in Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, finding that family ownership and involvement in the firm as well as the interaction of family ownership with their involvement are significantly and positively associated with internationalization. Abdelgawad and Zahra (2019) discuss that a collective sense of being that reflects the founders' and owner family members' espoused religious values and beliefs supports family firms' spiritual capital, which then influences strategic renewal activities such as conflict resolution and resource allocation.

Bibliometric analysis reveals that Zahra is considered among the most important authors in the dynamic capabilities literature (Albort-Morant, Leal-Rodríguez, Fernández-Rodríguez, & Ariza-Montes, 2018). While Zahra and George (2002a) is a highly cited paper within the body of work focusing on 'applications of dynamic capability' (Di Stefano, Peteraf, & Verona, 2010) , Zahra et al. (2006) did much to redefine dynamic capabilities. Barreto (2010) considered Zahra et al. (2006: 918) 's conception of dynamic capabilities as "the abilities to reconfigure a firm's resources and routines in the manner envisioned and deemed appropriate by its principal decision maker(s)" among the central definitions in the area. Bowman (2009) credit Zahra et al. (2006) with emphasizing the use of dynamic capabilities is intentional and deliberate (and not just plain luck). Winter (2003) distinguished between operational and dynamic capabilities, which formed the bases for Newey and Zahra's (2009) insight that it is the interactions between dynamic and operating capabilities that build the adaptive capacity of an organization. Zahra and George (2002b: 198) contend that dynamic capabilities can help "the IT field an opportunity to frame its research questions based on situational and environmental contexts within which such technologies can enable a firm to gain and sustain a competitive advantage." Arend and Bromiley (2009) , however, are critical of Zahra et al. (2006) 's notion of dynamic capabilities, noting that they do not explain the causal conditions that lead firms to develop and use dynamic capabilities.

Another topic to which Zahra has contributed much is social entrepreneurship. Bibliometric analysis ranks Zahra among the most published authors in social entrepreneurship research (Rey-Martí, Ribeiro-Soriano, & Palacios-Marqués, 2016) . Although the social entrepreneurship literature is replete "with an abundance of disputes, controversies, and alternative perspectives" (Morris, Santos, & Kuratko, 2020: 1) , it is also a fact that it is fast "becoming recognized as a dominant discourse within entrepreneurship research" (Kraus, Filser, O'Dwyer, & Shaw, 2014) . At a basic level, social entrepreneurship is about identifying and pursuing opportunities to generate social value. Building on the works of Hayek, Kirzner, and Schumpeter, a three-pronged typology of social entrepreneurs was introduced in Zahra et al. (2009) : social bricoleur (focus on local social needs), social constructionist (focus on social needs not adequately addressed by existing institutions and organizations), and social engineer (bring about revolutionary change to address systemic social problems). Zahra, Rawhouser, Bhawe, Neubaum, and Hayton (2008) identify five criteria to better understand global social opportunities: prevalence (how widespread is the problem?), relevance (do I have the resources, skills, and talent to address the problem?), urgency (how much spotlight does the problem draw?), accessibility (how difficult is the problem to understand and address?), and radicalness (how much novelty is needed to solve the problem?). Zahra, Newey, and Li (2014) build on insights from social entrepreneurship to articulate a broader agenda for international entrepreneurship that goes beyond traditional economic thinking to encompass sustainable well-being globally. 8

Sidney Winter, the 2015 GAER awardee, is considered among "outstanding and highly respected scholars" in management and organizational research (Hitt & Smith, 2005: 3) . The official GAER citation recognized Winter for his "deep empirical understanding of Schumpeterian processes of dynamic competition, generation of differential technological opportunities through appropriability conditions and the mechanisms driving dynamic capabilities in firms." He is widely credited with having created (with his co-author Richard Nelson) "the foundations of an evolutionary revolution" (Augier, 2005: 345) . His research has had a strong positive impact on scholarship in a range of fields, including strategic management, technology and innovation management, and innovation studies. Nelson and Winter (1977) is ranked among the most cited papers on innovation in its era (Rossetto, Bernardes, Borini, & Gattaz, 2018) . Winter (2000) , which integrates learning and satisficing into strategic management, is considered "an important contribution" to strategy research (Augier, 2005: 352) . Several of Winter's publications- Zollo and Winter (2002) , Winter (2003) , Jacobides and 8 International entrepreneurship research is another area where Zahra has made tremendous contributions (Servantie, Cabrol, Guieu, & Boissin, 2016) . Bibliometric analysis of international entrepreneurship research finds Zahra among the most cited authors in this area (Baier-Fuentes, Merigó, Amorós, & Gaviria-Marín, 2019) . His influential works in this area include Zahra and George (2002c) , Zahra (2005) , and Zahra et al. (2000) . Winter (2005) -form the intellectual core of the dynamic capabilities literature (Di Stefano et al. 2010) . Klevorick, Levin, Nelson, and Winter (1995) is considered among the most cited papers in the history of Strategic Management Journal (Salter & McKelvey, 2016 ).

Winter's contribution to entrepreneurship research can be categorized into two main areas: evolutionary theory (Nelson & Winter, 1982) and dynamic capabilities (Zollo & Winter, 2002; Winter, 2003) . Nelson and Winter (1982) , which began as a talk for an economics course at California Institute of Technology in the late 1960s (Augier, 2005) , critiqued neoclassical economic theory (particularly, Friedman's [1953] notion of profit maximization) to offer an evolutionary theory of economic change that incorporated 'natural selection' of firms and 'organizational genetics' to explain stability (Helfat, 1994) . Nelson and Winter (1982: 9) were explicit that their use of the term 'evolutionary' is "above all a signal that we have borrowed ideas from biology, thus exercising an option to which economists are entitled in perpetuity by virtue of the stimulus our predecessor Malthus provided to Darwin's thinking." Notwithstanding the "widespread dissatisfaction" with the hegemony of the neoclassical paradigm in economics in the 1970s (Ulen, 1983: 576) , the word 'evolution' was still "taboo in the social sciences" (Hodgson & Lamberg, 2018: 168) . Perhaps for these reasons, Nelson and Winter (1982) was welcomed as "an epoch-making departure from orthodox theory" and "one of the most significant books of the decade" (Mirowski, 1983: 757) . Two decades later, Hodgson (2003: 356) declared it "a rare and historic achievement." Nelson and Winter (1982) draw upon four key ideas already present in the extant literature of the time: (a) Friedman's (1953) argument that 'natural selection' is helpful to understand firm behavior; (b) the 'Cambridge Controversies' about the production function and the fallacy of homogenous capital stock (Cohen & Harcourt, 2003) ; (c) the Carnegie charge against optimization (Cyert & March, 1963) ; and (d) Schumpeter's position that production possibilities at a given point of time are a temporary system outcome. These disparate streams came together in the crucible of the RAND 'idea factory,' and through a "number of turns in which chance played a major role" (Winter, 2017: 729) , resulted in the evolutionary theory that Nelson and Winter (1982) proposed. Although spread out over an "introduction and six parts" (Ulen, 1983: 577) , the basic thesis of Nelson and Winter's (1982) evolutionary theory is clearly laid out in the first few pages: a. Firms are motivated by profit and engage in search for ways to improve their profits; these actions are, however, not profitmaximizing conditional on well-defined choice sets. b. More profitable firms drive out less profitable firms ('natural selection' mechanism); this, however, does not mean the industry reaches the hypothetical state of 'equilibrium' where all profitable firms are at the optimal size and the less profitable ones are pushed out of business. c. Firm behavior is a result of having, at any given time, certain capabilities and decision rules ('organizational genetics'), which are modified over time through deliberate learning efforts and random events.

Thus, Nelson and Winter (1982) had all three key elements of Darwin's theory of evolution: different types of firms (variety), inheritance of information through 'routines as genes' (retention), and the role of the external market environment in determining the survival and growth of firms (selection). The notion of routines built on Winter's (1964: 263) earlier conception of a "pattern of behavior that is followed repeatedly, but is subject to change if conditions change" and brought a Lamarckian perspective to evolutionary theory (Helfat, 1994) . Organizational theorists generally believe that Lamarckian models allow for both planned and unplanned changes in organizational routines as the environment changes around them, which is contrary to the Darwinian position that meaningful change in organizational routines is not only infrequent and rarely adaptive but also highly risky (Usher & Evans, 1996) . Nelson and Winter (1982: 11) were clear that "our theory is unabashedly Lamarckian: it contemplates both the 'inheritance' of acquired characters and the timely appearance of variation under the stimulus of adversity." Mirowski (1983: 763) , however, believes that Nelson and Winter (1982) "adhere neither to a Lamarckian or a Darwinian framework with any consistency," which adds to the confusion around the meaning of 'evolution. ' Nelson (2007) explains that Lamarckian refers to adoption of productive practices, which Hodgson and Knudsen (2007) find to be an unprecedented usage of the term not seen elsewhere in the literature.

The discussion of 'routines' in Nelson and Winter (1982) provided a theoretical foundation for the dynamic capabilities literature that emerged in the 1990s (Teece & Pisano, 1994) . Winter (2005) explained that the words 'routines' and 'capabilities' refer to the same unobservable characteristic: "pattern of behavior that is followed repeatedly" (Winter, 1964: 263) or "decision rules" (Winter, 1971: 245) . 9 Winter (1995: 148) defines routines as "a web of coordinating relationships connecting specific resources." Firms retain, replace, or modify their routines inline with Simon's satisficing principle, 10 which is the basis for the genetic stability and endogenous mutation in Nelson and Winter's (1982) evolutionary theory. It is routines, or capabilities, that enable organizations to perform their characteristic 'output' actions-"particularly, the creation of a tangible product or the provision of a service, and the development of new products and services" (Dosi, Nelson, & Winter, 2000: 1) . Because routines are based on things that firms have done well in the past, Nelson and Winter (1982) considered evolutionary economic theory to be pathdependent, which refers to the "dependence of the current realization of a socio-economic process on previous states, up to the very initial conditions" (Castaldi & Dosi, 2006: 99) . Zollo and Winter (2002: 340) define dynamic capabilities as "a learned and stable pattern of collective activity through which the organization systematically generates and modifies its operating routines in pursuit of improved effectiveness." Two tautology-related problems had plagued the prior efforts to define dynamic capability: (a) defining capability as a sort of ability (e.g., Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, 1997) and (b) associating capabilities with competitive advantage (e.g., Griffith & Harvey, 2001) such that "if the firm has a dynamic capability, it must perform well, and if the firm is performing well, it should have a dynamic capability" (Cepeda & vera, 2007: 427) . Zollo and Winter (2002) 's definition put forth a non-tautological view of dynamic capability based on Nelson and Winter's (1982) work on routines. Winter (2000) highlighted two major differences between routines and capabilities: (a) routines can be of any size and significance, whereas capabilities are substantial in scope and importance; and (b) routines are often invisible and unknown to management, but capabilities are at least somewhat understood by 9 Nelson and Winter (1973) used the term 'capabilities' in the title. Winter (2005) shares that the original title of Nelson and Winter (1982) also included 'capabilities,' but it was deleted when the title was shortened at the publisher's request.

10 Herbert Simon, recipient of the 1975 Nobel Prize in Economics, explained that satisficing is about searching a haystack for a 'needle sharp enough to sew with' as opposed to optimization which is about searching for 'the sharpest needle in the haystack' (Winter, 2000) . From a satisficing logic, the search for alternatives stops when the first reasonable solution is found. management. Routines are learned, highly patterned, repetitious, or quasi-repetitious, and founded in part in tacit knowledge; capabilities are complex, structured, and multidimensional (Winter, 2003) .

Building on Collis (1994) , Zollo and Winter (2002) distinguish between operational routines (first-order, how a firm earns its living) and dynamic capabilities (second order, how a firm changes its operational capabilities). Winter (2003) differentiates between ordinary capabilities (or operational routines) and dynamic capabilities, and both are highly patterned and well established in many respects. A capability, Winter (2000: 983) conceived, is "a high-level routine (or collection of routines) that, together with its implementing input flows, confers upon an organization's management a set of decision options for producing significant outputs of a particular type." Operational capabilities, Zollo and Winter (2002) explained, focused on the present, whereas dynamic capabilities were future-oriented. Consequently, operational capabilities help firms navigate the present and dynamic capabilities prepare the firm to adapt to changing environments. Not all organizational change requires the exercise of dynamic capabilities. Organizations also change in ways that are non-repetitive and 'intendedly rational,' which Winter (2003) describes as 'ad hoc problem solving.' The absence of practice or patterned behavior involved in such change means that it does not involve capabilities (Helfat & Winter, 2011) .

There is no doubt that Nelson and Winter (1982) has had a profound influence on academic thinking about organizations. Many scholars favorably cite Alfred Marshall who wrote that the "Mecca of economics [lies] in economic biology rather than economic mechanics" (Marshall, 1948: xiv) It is commonly believed that economists of various stripes explicitly draw upon evolutionary theory to varying degrees (Wilson & Gowdy, 2013) . However, the impact of Nelson and Winter (1982) has most acutely been felt in business research and much less so in economic thinking (Hodgson & Lamberg, 2018) . There have been several insightful critiques of evolutionary economic theory (e.g., Witt, 2008) , including its ideas of path-dependence (Garud, Kumaraswamy, & Karnoe, 2010) , Lamarckian evolution (Hodgson & Knudsen, 2006) , and routines (Hodgson, 2003) . The dynamic capability literature also has been criticized for its vagueness, unresolved measurement issues, and tenuous empirical support (Arend & Bromiley, 2009) , charges that even its most ardent supporters accept (Helfat & Peteraf, 2009 ). There is one aspect of Nelson and Winter (1982) that has gone largely unnoticed so far: firm profitability as the selection criterion (Winter, 1995) . As Friedman (1953) suggested, and Nelson and Winter (2002) affirmed, the natural selection argument is based on profit-induced growth; that is, successful firms earn profits and expand. 11 Not surprisingly, research on small firms has shown that profitability is a key to long-term survival and growth (Davidsson, Steffens, & Fitzsimmons, 2009) .

However, the emphasis on profitability is not always consistent with the reality of entrepreneurship, as evidenced from the impressive growth of firms that have never seen profitability (Somerville, 2019) . Thousands of growth-hungry companies across diverse industries offer consumers free trials and discounts on home cleaning, beauty makeup, car sharing, and food delivery with scant consideration for profits (Brown, 2018a) . Just four companies-co-working giant We Co., ride-sharing pioneers Uber and Lyft, and meal-delivery service DoorDash-all of who became top industry players after raising billions of dollars from investors and never turning a profit together lost about $15 billion in one year (Somerville, 2019) . Indeed, many unprofitable companies often get more financial support than they asked. The 22-location hostel chain Selina, which offers beds and co-working space for 'digital nomads,' was seeking $50 million to expand when it received $95 million of equity and debt to target growth to some 50-plus locations (Brown, 2018b) . Firms fuel demand with heavy discounts to first-time users and generous referral bonuses for anyone who signs up a friend, and their success spawns competitors who tend to spend even heavier on marketing. Investors report impatience with the failure of some companies to turn a profit even in the face of stupendous growth and market dominance (e.g., Uber), but the allure of creative market leaders with loyal customers hooked by attractive deals delivered at the touch of a smartphone app refuses to diminish (Somerville, 2019) .

It is tempting to think that "over the long term, internet companies will likely provide goods and services that can be sold at greater than the cost of production" (Shane & Venkataraman, 2001: 14) . Unfortunately, neither evolutionary theorists nor other scholars have been able to provide any guidance on a reasonable duration for long term. If profit is not a reliable criterion for natural selection in economic affairs, then it is not clear what else the criterion may be. Mirowski (1983: 764) contends that evolutionary theories in economics must provision for "bankruptcy/death" because this is what "gives selection mechanisms their bite." A common idea of economic selection is that some firms enter an industry (organizational birth) and other-inefficient-firms are eliminated from the industry (Hodgson, 1996) . Simon (1993: 134) , for example, discussed that the inability to cope with rapid environmental change will "cause the firm's bankruptcy and demise." Bankrupt firms exit an industry and are replaced with new firms (Knudsen, 2008) . However, bankruptcy is not organizational death. A cursory glance at the corporate world reveals many firms that went bankrupt and then were back in business, such as General Motors, Kodak, American Apparel, Chrysler, Marvel Entertainment, and Sbarro, to name a few. There are also companies like True Religion, a Californiabased denim-maker, that have gone bankrupt several times. At a basic level, filing for bankruptcy gives a financially struggling company the chance to continue operating while it executes a reorganization plan. Thus, bankruptcy is not the same as organizational death, and there is no biological analog of corporate bankruptcy. Evolutionary explanations of economic change therefore need to clearly explain how the biological notion of an organism's death will work in their models in a way that corresponds to the reality of the business world we live in.

The relation between strategy and entrepreneurship research has long been a contentious issue among scholars. Notwithstanding ongoing concerns about whether these two academic fields are related to each other (or not), a growing body of research has accumulated at the intersection of strategy and entrepreneurship research. Four scholars have been recognized for making valuable contributions at the intersection of strategy and entrepreneurship research. This chapter discusses the work of Arnold Cooper, Kathleen Eisenhardt, Shaker Zahra, and Sidney Winter, all of who contributed to entrepreneurship research by using insights from strategy research. In doing so, they helped advance both fields and in some ways contributed to laying the foundation for strategic entrepreneurship research.

Family firms' religious identity and strategic renewal

Meta-analytic choices and judgment calls: Implications for theory building and testing, obtained effect sizes, and scholarly impact

Assessing the origins, evolution and prospects of the literature on dynamic capabilities: A bibliometric analysis

The entrepreneurship of resource-based theory

What are dynamic capabilities and are they a useful construct in strategic management?

A critical examination of the EO-performance relationship

Bibliometric analysis of absorptive capacity

Assessing the dynamic capabilities view: Spare change, everyone? Strategic Organization

Everything in its place: Entrepreneurship and the strategic management of cities, regions, and states

Why is management an evolutionary science? An interview with Sidney G. Winter

International entrepreneurship: A bibliometric overview

Making the marriage work: The benefits of strategy's takeover of entrepreneurship for strategic organization

Trump pushes broader use of hydroxychloroquine against Coronavirus

On the replicability of abductive research in management and organizations: Internal replication and its alternatives

Tanzania's leader urges people to worship in throngs against Coronavirus

Dynamic capabilities: A review of past research and an agenda for the future

Corporate entrepreneurship and performance: A meta-analysis

Zombies: Who are they and how do firms become zombies

Heuristics to navigate uncertainties: Interview with Professor Kathleen M. Eisenhardt

Strategic goals, perceived uncertainty, and economic performance in volatile environments

Strategic decision processes in high velocity environments: Four cases in the microcomputer industry

How to live in San Francisco without spending any money

SoftBank's billions spur global race to pour money into startups

Product development: Past research, present findings, and future directions

The art of continuous change: Linking complexity theory and time-paced evolution in relentlessly shifting organizations

Patterns of development and acquisitions for Silicon Valley startups

Doctoral education in the field of entrepreneurship

Corporate entrepreneurship and strategic management: Insights from a process study

Kathleen Eisenhardt: Recipient of the 2012 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research

Upper echelons research revisited: Antecedents, elements, and consequences of top management team composition

Are individuals entering self-employment overly optimistic? An empirical test of plans and projections on nascent entrepreneur expectations

The grip of history and the scope for novelty: Some results and open questions on path dependence in economic processes

Dynamic capabilities and operational capabilities: A knowledge management perspective

A classification of the corporate entrepreneurship umbrella: Labels and perspectives

Retrospectives: Whatever happened to the Cambridge capital theory controversies

Innovation and learning: The two faces of R&D

Absorptive capacity: A new perspective on learning and innovation

Fortune favors the prepared firm

Prime Minister Boris Johnson moved to intensive care

Technology and industrial clusters: How different are they to manage?

How valuable are organizational capabilities?

R&D is more efficient in small companies

Small companies can pioneer new products

The Palo Alto experience

Spin-offs and technical entrepreneurship

Incubator organizations and technical entrepreneurship

Technical entrepreneurship: What do we know? R&D

The role of incubator organizations in the founding of growth-oriented firms

Findings on predictors of performance from a large-scale research program

Success among high-technology firms

New business in America: The firms and their owners

Initial human and financial capital as predictors of new venture performance

Entrepreneurs' perceived chances for success

Entrepreneurship and the initial size of firms

Corporate entrepreneurship and the pursuit of competitive advantage

Strategic management of small firms in hostile and benign environments

A behavioral theory of the firm

The legitimacy of strategic alliances: An institutional perspective

Understanding the multi-dimensional nature of absorptive capacity

Conceptual and empirical challenges in the study of firm growth

Entrepreneurship as growth; growth as entrepreneurship

Growing profitable or growing from profits: Putting the horse in front of the cart

Rotating leadership and collaborative innovation: Recombination processes in symbiotic relationships

Developing theory through simulation methods

Optimal structure, market dynamism, and the strategy of simple rules

Family business research in the new millennium: An overview of the who, the where, the what, and the why

Dimensions of organizational task environments

Dynamic capabilities deconstructed: A bibliographic investigation into the origins, development, and future directions of the research domain

The nature and dynamics of organisational capabilities

Sherlock Holmes: A scandal in Bohemia

Capturing absorptive capacity: A critical review and future prospects

Better stories, not better constructs, to generate better theory: A rejoinder to Eisenhardt

How to make strategic alliances work

Location decisions of spin-offs from public research institutions

Control: Organizational and economic approaches

Agency-and institutional-theory explanations: The case of retail sales compensation

Making fast strategic decisions in high-velocity environments

Agency theory: An assessment and review

Building theories from case study research

Better stories and better constructs: The case for rigor and comparative logic

Thoughts about research, inspirations for research and future research

Politics of strategic decision making in high-velocity environments: Toward a midrange theory

Theory building from cases: Opportunities and challenges

Dynamic capabilities: What are they?

Knowledge based view: A new theory of strategy

Organizational growth: Linking founding team, strategy, environment, and growth among US semiconductor ventures

Resource-based view of strategic alliance formation: Strategic and social effects in entrepreneurial firms

Accelerating adaptive processes: Product innovation in the global computer industry

Strategic decision making

Firm spin-offs in Denmark 1981-2000: Patterns of entry and exit

A co-citation bibliometric analysis of strategic management research

Thirty years of entrepreneurship research published in top journals: Analysis of citations, co-citations and themes

A measure of absorptive capacity: Scale development and validation

Essays in positive economics

Spinoffs and their endowments: Beyond knowledge inheritance theory

The structure and evolution of the strategic management field: A content analysis of 26 years of strategic management research

Unpacking the CEO-board relationship: How strategy making happens in entrepreneurial firms

Path dependence or path creation

Spin-offs and the new firm formation process

The effects of businessuniversity alliances on innovative output and financial performance: A study of publicly traded biotechnology companies

Survival of the fittest? Entrepreneurial human capital and the persistence of underperforming firms

The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies of qualitative research

A resource perspective of global dynamic capabilities

Entrepreneurship research in management and organizational studies: A contribution-based assessment of the literature

Entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance: The mediating role of generative and acquisitive learning through customer relationships

Gender characterizations in entrepreneurship: A multi-level investigation of sex-role stereotypes about high-growth, commercial, and social entrepreneurs

The concept of entrepreneurial orientation

Guest editors' introduction: Corporate entrepreneurship

Strategic alliances and product development in high technology new firms: The moderating effect of technological capabilities

The causes and consequences of the initial network positions of new organizations: From whom do entrepreneurs receive investments?

Catalyzing strategies and efficient tie formation: How entrepreneurial firms obtain investment ties

How do social defenses work? A resource-dependence lens on technology ventures, venture capital investors, and corporate relationships

Abducting economics

Evolutionary trajectories in petroleum firm R&D. Management Science

The birth of capabilities: Market entry and the importance of pre-history

Understanding dynamic capabilities: Progress along a developmental path

Untangling dynamic and operational capabilities: Strategy for the (N)ever-changing world

Great minds in management: The process of theory development

Strategic entrepreneurship: Entrepreneurial strategies for wealth creation

Strategic entrepreneurship: Creating value for individuals, organizations, and society

Economics and evolution: Bringing life back into economics

The hidden persuaders: Institutions and individuals in economic theory

Dismantling Lamarckism: Why descriptions of socio-economic evolution as Lamarckian are misleading

Evolutionary theorizing beyond Lamarckism: A reply to Richard Nelson

The past and future of evolutionary economics: Some reflections based on new bibliometric evidence

Replicating Silicon Valley: Talent and techno-management in a culture of serendipity

The co-evolution of capabilities and transaction costs: Explaining the institutional structure of production

Qualitative research in entrepreneurship studies: A state-of-science

Functioning modeling corporate entrepreneurship: An empirical integrative analysis

In what way is abductive inference creative? Transactions of the Charles S

Adaptive responses by conservative and entrepreneurial firms

Swimming with sharks: Technology ventures, defense mechanisms and corporate relationships

Where do breakthroughs come from? Characteristics of high-potential inventions

On the sources and significance of interindustry differences in technological opportunities

Organizational routines in evolutionary theory

Strategic alliances as social capital: A multidimensional view

Strategic management and entrepreneurship: Friends or foes?

Social entrepreneurship: An exploratory citation analysis

A tribute to 50 years of excellence in entrepreneurship and small business

The entrepreneurial imperative of the 21st century

Clarifying the domains of corporate entrepreneurship

Corporate entrepreneurship: The innovative challenge for a new global economic reality

Pioneers in entrepreneurship and small business research

The reification of absorptive capacity: A critical review and rejuvenation of the construct

Templates and turns in qualitative studies of strategy and management

Let's take the con out of econometrics

The alliance innovation performance of R&D alliances: The absorptive capacity perspective

Brazil president Bolsonaro fires health minister amid Coronavirus crisis

Knowing, power and materiality: A critical review and reconceptualization of absorptive capacity

Who is driving the bus? An analysis of author and institution contributions to entrepreneurship research

Women and self-employment: A part of or apart from theoretical construct?

Principles of economics

Innovation in conservative and entrepreneurial firms: Two models of strategic momentum. Strategic Management

The structure of "unstructured" decision processes

An evolutionary theory of economics change: A review article

The great divides in social entrepreneurship and where they lead us

Relational and contractual governance in family firms: Effects on strategic decision making

Comment on: Dismantling Lamarckism: Why descriptions of socio-economic evolution as Lamarckian are misleading, by Hodgson and Knudsen

Toward an evolutionary theory of economic capabilities

In search of useful theory of innovation

An evolutionary theory of economic change

Evolutionary theorizing in economics

The intellectual structure of the strategic management field: An author co-citation analysis

The evolving firm: How dynamic and operating capabilities interact to enable entrepreneurship

Intrapreneurship strategy for internal markets-corporate, non-profit and government institution cases

Defending abduction

Growing with the market: How changing conditions during market growth affect formation and evolution of interfirm ties

Origin of alliance portfolios: Entrepreneurs, network strategies, and firm performance

Configuring absorptive capacity as a key process for research intensive firms

The relative power of CEOs and boards of directors: Associations with corporate performance

Corporate entrepreneurship: Current research and future directions

Strategic decision processes: Critical review and future directions

Eisenhardt's impact on theory in case study research

A bibliometric analysis of social entrepreneurship

Structure and evolution of innovation research in the last 60 years: Review and future trends in the field of business through the citations and co-citations analysis

Evolutionary analysis of innovation and entrepreneurship: Sidney G. Winter-recipient of the 2015 Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research

Constructing markets and shaping boundaries: Entrepreneurial power in nascent fields

Causation and effectuation: Toward a theoretical shift from economic inevitability to entrepreneurial contingency

Strategic Management

Unpacking corporate entrepreneurship: A critique and extension

The challenges of corporate entrepreneurship in the disruptive age

Patterns of abduction

Is international entrepreneurship a field? A bibliometric analysis of the literature (1989-2015)

Thinking inside the box?

The promise of entrepreneurship as a field of research

Entrepreneurship as a field of research: A response to Zahra and Dess, Singh, and Erikson

Conceptualizing and measuring the organizational environment: A multidimensional approach

Toward a reconciliation of the definitional issues in the field of corporate entrepreneurship

Shaker Zahra author bibliometric study: Analysis of scientific publications from 1985 to

Strategy and organizational evolution

A comment on developing the field of entrepreneurship through the study of opportunity recognition and exploitation

Generalizability in qualitative research: Misunderstandings, opportunities and recommendations for the sport and exercise sciences

Type of entrepreneur, type of firm, and managerial motivation: Implications for organizational life cycle theory

Field research methods in strategic management: Contributions to theory building and testing

Tech startups face new investor mandate: Profits over discounts

New technology-based firms in the European Union: An introduction

What really goes on in Silicon Valley? Spatial clustering and dispersal in modular production networks

Developing an entrepreneurial typology: The roles of entrepreneurial alertness and attributional style

Dynamic capabilities and strategic management

The dynamic capabilities of firms: An introduction

Corporate entrepreneurship: Antidote or oxymoron?

Absorptive capacity: Valuing a reconceptualization

Review of the book An evolutionary theory of economic change

Exploration, exploitation, and financial performance: Analysis of S&P 500 corporations

Life and death along gasoline alley: Darwinian and Lamarckian processes in a differentiating population

Strategy and entrepreneurship

Cow dung, garlic, and a prayer: The fight against phony cures for Coronavirus

Evolution as a general theoretical framework for economics and public policy

Economic 'natural selection' and the theory of the firm

Satisficing, selection, and the innovating remnant

Four Rs of profitability: Rents, resources, routines, and replication

The satisficing principle in capability learning

Understanding dynamic capabilities

Great minds in management: The process of theory development

Pursuing the evolutionary agenda in economics and management research

What is specific about evolutionary economics

The art of fieldwork

The development and interpretation of entrepreneurial typologies

Case study research: Design and methods

Predictors and financial outcomes of corporate entrepreneurship: An exploratory study

A conceptual model of entrepreneurship as firm behavior: A critique and extension

Governance, ownership, and corporate entrepreneurship: The moderating impact of industry technological opportunities

International expansion of US manufacturing family businesses: The effect of ownership and involvement

A theory of international new ventures: A decade of research

Corporate entrepreneurship as knowledge creation and conversion: The role of entrepreneurial hubs

Entrepreneurial risk taking in family firms: The wellspring of the regenerative capability

Business strategy, technology policy and firm performance

Contextual influences on the corporate entrepreneurship-performance relationship: A longitudinal analysis

Innovation strategy and financial performance in manufacturing companies: An empirical study

Entrepreneurship as a field of research: Encouraging dialogue and debate

Absorptive capacity: A review, reconceptualization, and extension

The net-enabled business innovation cycle and the evolution of dynamic capabilities

International entrepreneurship: The current status of the field and future research agenda

Boards of directors and corporate financial performance: A review and integrative model

Family business research: A strategic reflection

A typology of social entrepreneurs: Motives, search processes and ethical challenges

International expansion by new venture firms: International diversity, mode of market entry, technological learning, and performance

On the frontiers: The implications of social entrepreneurship for international entrepreneurship

Corporate entrepreneurship, knowledge, and competence development

Globalization of social entrepreneurship opportunities

Entrepreneurship and dynamic capabilities: A review, model and research agenda

Deliberate the evolution of dynamic capabilities

The capacity to innovate: A metaanalysis of absorptive capacity