Entrepreneurship: A theory for no theory for now

We discuss the impediments to theorizing about entrepreneurial activity, why these exist, and what to do about them. We do so because we believe that the evolution of theory in entrepreneurship has been frustratingly slow. We approach the relevant issues from an appropriate but narrow perspective-through the analysis of two pairs of recent articles published in the generalist top theory outlet-the Academy of Management Review. We consider these as exemplars of high-quality, high-visibility, likely-to-be-highly-cited, and new entrepreneurship theorizing. All four articles focus on original partial theory-building in the entrepreneurial process. These articles address different challenges facing different individual entrepreneurs, with many similarities in approach. However, each work argues its new propositions or insights from a non-entrepreneurial reference theory, which may well be one of the sacrifices that must be made to get published in top mainstream journals. We focus on the similarities of these articles to argue our points about why theorizing in our field is unlikely to improve in the near future and to identify the main impediments to such improvements. We explore the negative implications for our field's future, and then we suggest five bold steps to better the prognostication.