There is an on-going debate in the entrepreneurship academy about whether we can actually teach students to be entrepreneurs. Its resolution is inextricably connected with our theoretical assumptions because they affect how and what we reach. This article is the first in a set of two contained in this issue that argues that we should develop more refined cumulative theory and teach it to students in a way that emphasizes learning by doing, which should accelerate student mastery. This first article treats the theoretical side of teaching entrepreneurship, whereas the second addresses the pedagogical side of entrepreneurship theory. Those who advocate that entrepreneurship can be understood and taught to students assume that researchers will eventually develop a more general theory of entrepreneurship. Theory is an essential parr of what we teach because we do not know any other way to help students anticipate the future, which is a key to entrepreneurial success, unless we counsel them to rely on luck or intuition. The limitation of luck and intuition is that we do not know how to teach either of them. If students could accurately anticipate the future, they could allocate their resources in the most productive manner which would ensure their survival satisfaction and prosperity. Despite the current limitations of our theorizing, theory still offers the most promise as course content for students. This article sides with Kuhn (1970) who argued that theory is the most practical thing that we can reach to students. Its purpose is to comment on the progress to date in developing entrepreneurship theory. it begins by analyzing the contents of 18 syllabi provided by participants at a retreat for entrepreneurship scholars. It notes a wide divergence in topics, and possible causes for this divergence, which seem to be characteristic of a developing academic discipline. It appeals for more theory in our courses and suggests questions to which entrepreneurship scholars can provide distinctive answers when compared with those offered by scholars from other disciplines. One way to add more theoretical content to entrepreneurship courses is to teach students what they ought to do, which is coded language for theory. In addition, instructors should not merely describe what entrepreneurs do, particularly in light of the observation that most of them fail and accordingly have been described as ill-fated fools. Finally, assuming that scholars can offer a more general theory of entrepreneurship, they would be able to emphasize more deductive approaches as opposed to inductive ones. These appeals for more theoretical content depend on several assumptions, which include: (I) the improbability that students can encounter circumstances that would be similar to anecdotal lessons learned in entrepreneurship school; (2) the existence of a process that can be explained theoretically; (3) studying ideal types can be discouraging to aspiring entrepreneurs if they do not fit a special profile; (4) the high failure rate among entrepreneurs makes suggesting to students that they ought to pattern their activities after them seem illogical; (5) studying average profiles, anecdotal recommendations, rules of thumb or war stories can only lead to average returns, given semi-strong information efficiency; and (6) leveraging the motivational benefits of studying successful entrepreneurs may have detrimental, unintended consequences, among others. This article notes possible causes of non-cumulative theory building and suggests several opportunities to build cumulative theory. Although it acknowledges that the field of entrepreneurship currently lacks cumulative theory, it offers a contingency approach for teaching entrepreneurship, which is actually very similar to the scientific method used by scholars to develop hypotheses about the future. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Inc.
