Realism, empiricism, and fetishism in the study of entrepreneurship

We challenge a stream of thought that focuses on drawing what we see as a frivolous contrast between creation and discovery view of entrepreneurship. Its detachment from the empirical world is tantamount to theoretical “fetishism”. We see opportunities as emergent structures, with ontologically real components, epistemologically real functional relationships, and requiring real human actions and interactions to come to fruition. This calls for building theory based on the strengths of both discovery and creation assumptions.