Visions of futures and futures of visions: Entrepreneurs, artifacts, and worlds

In a recent effort to develop the individual-opportunity nexus, Ramoglou and McMullen (2022) argue that extant conceptualizations of opportunities fail because they reify opportunities by engaging in “thing-talk”. Their proposed alternative ignores concrete things by reinterpreting the nexus in terms of confident entrepreneurs (who imagine world-states) and world-states (that are possible or not). But, regardless of formulation, the dualistic nexus framework fails to account for the creative aspects of entrepreneurship and places impossible demands on the concept of opportunity. A triadic view of entrepreneurs, artifacts, and worlds transcends the distinction between “thing-talk” and “confidence-talk” as central to an unambiguous scholarly use of opportunity language. Acknowledging artifacts as tangible interfaces between entrepreneurial confidence and real-world conditions also prompts a reevaluation of what Ramoglou and McMullen (2022) term “entrepreneurial work”, calling for an approach that duly acknowledges its creative, artifact-centered, and indeed world-making character.