Prescriptive Entrepreneurship

There is a body of knowledge emerging, largely based on informational economics, which appears to explain how aspiring entrepreneurs can be more successful. This research is both theoretically motivated and empirically investigated. Its objective is not to explain how entrepreneurs act. In fact, most aspirants discontinue their ventures, so truly representative research would typically describe terminated ventures. Instead, an informational economics approach is used in this symposium to report on the experimental testing and teaching of theoretically derived prescriptions, which seem to account for notable improvements in performance. The proposed presenter symposium will consist of the following segment: 1.Overview of informational economics – (Fiet) 10 minutes 2.Summary of Experimental Trials (Nixon) -- 10 minutes 3.Taking a Second Look at Systematic Search (Patel) -- 10 minutes 4. Forgiving Business Models (Fiet) -- 10 minutes 5.Teaching Prescriptive Entrepreneurship (Clouse and Norton) -- 30 minutes 6.Summary (Fiet) -- 5 minutes 7.Questions for Presenters -- 15 minutes Total Time: 90 minutes This session has multiple objectives. First, it presents an overview of the pedagogical promise of constrained, systematic search, which was derived from informational economics. Second, it illustrates the potential to add to what it is known about prescriptive entrepreneurship. Third, it demonstrates in the field of entrepreneurship the usefulness of a deductive approach for developing practical applications of theoretical concepts. Fourth, it illustrates how multiple, theoretical applications can be developed simultaneously to offer a comprehensive approach for discovery and wealth creation.