ArtifactDesign; Prescriptive knowledge; Problem space; Tacit knowledge; Entrepreneurial practice,
Abstract :
[en] An important challenge facing entrepreneurship researchers is the “three-body” knowledge problem of how to use “theoretical knowledge” to produce “prescriptive knowledge” that communicates the “practical knowledge” of situated practice to students and practitioners of entrepreneurship. We argue that a contribution can be made to solving this problem by theorizing practical knowledge as the “know-how” to do a situated entrepreneurial practice. “Know-how” is a cognitive “capacity to act” that prescribes for a practitioner how to produce a type of outcome in a range of circumstances. This “know-how” can potentially, therefore, be reconstructed theoretically as explicit micro-prescriptive guidelines for third-party practice. To exploit this connection between practical knowledge and prescriptive knowledge, however, we first need to overcome the problem that “know-how” is largely tacit in the moment of real-time forward-looking practice. In other words, the practitioner is not directly aware of their tacit “know-how”, or “tacit knowledge”, at the time of practice. In this article, we explore the contribution design theory can make to empirically eliciting, and conceptually inferring, the real-time “tacit knowledge” of entrepreneurial practice as a precursor to producing micro-prescriptive knowledge.
Disciplines :
General management, entrepreneurship & organizational theory
Author, co-author :
Selden, Paul
Fletcher, Denise Elaine ; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance (FDEF) > Center for Research in Economic Analysis (CREA)
External co-authors :
no
Language :
English
Title :
The tacit knowledge of entrepreneurial design: interrelating theory, practice and prescription in entrepreneurship research’
Publication date :
2019
Journal title :
Journal of Business Venturing Insights
Special issue title :
Bringing design alongside theory and practice in entrepreneurship research
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