Entrepreneurship is becoming more and more relevant in innovation contexts because of its capabilities of overcoming the uncertainty dominating the environment. Nevertheless, just a few scholars acknowledge the presence of a structured entrepreneurial method to validate business ideas rather than resorting on mere intuitions. Hence, the study addresses this current issue by trying to reconcile the entrepreneurial practice with a scientific methodology able to channel creative processes into more systematic practices to generate new ideas, new business models, new products and new services, especially in dynamic and uncertain environments. Through a structured literature review, both the scientific method and entrepreneurship have been widely examined in a tentative to link the two topics in a definition of a comprehensive framework applied by experimental approaches to innovation. The identified practices are: Agile Software Development (Beck, Beedle, et al, 2001), Scrum (Schwaber, 1997), Customer Development (Blank, 2005), Lean Startup (Ries, 2011), Design Thinking (Brown, 2009; Martin, 2009), Growth Hacking (Ellis and Brown, 2017) and Sprint (Knapp, Zeratsky, et al, 2016). The methodologies have been reconducted to the deductive and hypothetico-deductive scientific methods, which scientists follow when they attempt to legitimate theories starting from the observation of the environment they are in. Thus, the resulting framework consists in seven phases: observation and planning, interpretation and prioritization, building, testing, analysis, learning and decision and cycle. It has been analysed how entrepreneurs can validate their hypothesis about products, services or business models via the proposed structure. Experiments are fundamental in understanding whether the outputs match customer requirements. Indeed, the audience is crucial in supporting the company’s process via continuous feedbacks towards the reduction of wastes in terms of money, time, human capital and other resources. The conclusions of these research hold for both theoretical and practical implications. Scholars can understand better the tight connection between the entrepreneurial practices and the scientific method while practitioners can count on a structured and systematic framework guiding their actions when dealing with uncertain settings.
La capacità di superare gli ostacoli creati dall’incertezza è diventata sempre più cruciale in contesti di innovazione. Purtroppo, però, non sono molti gli studiosi a riconoscere l’importanza di un metodo strutturato che guidi verso la validazione di idee invece di far ricorso alla pura intuizione. Date queste premesse, questa ricerca di pone di integrare la pratica imprenditoriale con il metodo scientifico, in quanto quest’ultimo è in grado di invogliare il processo creativo tipico dell’innovazione verso un approccio più sistematico di generazione di nuove idee, modelli di business, prodotti e servizi, soprattutto in contesti dinamici e incerti. Il metodo scientifico e la capacità imprenditoriale vengono ampiamente analizzate attraverso una strutturata revisione della letteratura al fine di delineare uno schema che racchiuda entrambi i concetti. La ricerca culmina nell’identificazione di una struttura scientifica utilizzata dagli approcci sperimentali per sviluppare innovazioni. Le pratiche selezionate per procedere nello studio sono le seguenti: Agile Software Development (Beck, Beedle, et al, 2001), Scrum (Schwaber, 1997), Customer Development (Blank, 2005), Lean Startup (Ries, 2011), Design Thinking (Brown, 2009; Martin, 2009), Growth Hacking (Ellis e Brown, 2017) e Sprint (Knapp, Zeratsky, et al, 2016). Queste metodologie vengono ricondotte al metodo scientifico deduttivo e ipotetico-deduttivo che gli scienziati impiegano per legittimare le proprie teorie a partire dall’osservazione dei fatti naturali che accadono nel mondo che li circonda. Il modello qui definito è composto da sette fasi: osservazione e pianificazione, interpretazione e priorità, costruzione, test, analisi, apprendimento e decisione, iterazione. La struttura proposta consente di validare le ipotesi riguardo prodotti, servizi e modelli di business attraverso sperimentazione. Gli esperimenti sono, infatti, essenziali per comprendere se i prodotti dell’azienda sono in grado di sopravvivere sul mercato rispettando le richieste dei clienti. I consumatori sono, quindi, cruciali nel supportare le imprese nel loro processo continuo di innovazione e riduzione degli sprechi, sia in termini di tempo e costi che altre risorse, dando ripetuti riscontri sull’apprezzamento di prodotti e servizi offerti. Concludendo, questo studio ha ripercussioni sia nel mondo accademico che manageriale. La teoria manageriale, infatti, viene esplicitamente connessa con il metodo scientifico tramite uno schema sistematico e strutturato che gli imprenditori possono utilizzare nelle loro pratiche al fine di migliorare il processo decisionale per lanciare sul mercato prodotti, servizi e modelli di business innovativi.
Reconciling the entrepreneurial practice and the scientific method : a critical analysis
BOSISIO, LETIZIA
2017/2018
Abstract
Entrepreneurship is becoming more and more relevant in innovation contexts because of its capabilities of overcoming the uncertainty dominating the environment. Nevertheless, just a few scholars acknowledge the presence of a structured entrepreneurial method to validate business ideas rather than resorting on mere intuitions. Hence, the study addresses this current issue by trying to reconcile the entrepreneurial practice with a scientific methodology able to channel creative processes into more systematic practices to generate new ideas, new business models, new products and new services, especially in dynamic and uncertain environments. Through a structured literature review, both the scientific method and entrepreneurship have been widely examined in a tentative to link the two topics in a definition of a comprehensive framework applied by experimental approaches to innovation. The identified practices are: Agile Software Development (Beck, Beedle, et al, 2001), Scrum (Schwaber, 1997), Customer Development (Blank, 2005), Lean Startup (Ries, 2011), Design Thinking (Brown, 2009; Martin, 2009), Growth Hacking (Ellis and Brown, 2017) and Sprint (Knapp, Zeratsky, et al, 2016). The methodologies have been reconducted to the deductive and hypothetico-deductive scientific methods, which scientists follow when they attempt to legitimate theories starting from the observation of the environment they are in. Thus, the resulting framework consists in seven phases: observation and planning, interpretation and prioritization, building, testing, analysis, learning and decision and cycle. It has been analysed how entrepreneurs can validate their hypothesis about products, services or business models via the proposed structure. Experiments are fundamental in understanding whether the outputs match customer requirements. Indeed, the audience is crucial in supporting the company’s process via continuous feedbacks towards the reduction of wastes in terms of money, time, human capital and other resources. The conclusions of these research hold for both theoretical and practical implications. Scholars can understand better the tight connection between the entrepreneurial practices and the scientific method while practitioners can count on a structured and systematic framework guiding their actions when dealing with uncertain settings.| File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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2018_12_Bosisio.pdf
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https://hdl.handle.net/10589/145110