1 INVITED DISTINGUISHED COMMENTARY ACADEMIC ENTREPRENEURSHIP: PARADIGM SOUGHT TO PARADIGM FOUND G. Dale Meyer University of Colorado – Boulder gdalemeyer@gmail.com Editor’s Notes (G. Hills): It’s a pleasure to invite and present thoughts from an early pioneer in our emerging entrepreneurship discipline. His scholarly works and academic association leadership have elevated the entire field. This article is in part a personal statement from one of our greater minds. The reader will see the interwoven theoretical application to Dale Meyer’s own career. This reminds me of the deference he received from leaders in the field when he spoke at an Iowa State research conference decades ago. This was a step toward him entering the field. It also reminds me of Dale and myself skipping down the sidewalk like school children at another conference; and this article helps to explain his leadership behaviors! Professor Meyer is indeed a distinguished scholar and professor who continues to make a difference. You will enjoy this article. A LIMITED EXPOSE OF THE PATH OF ACADEMIC ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN ESTABLISHING LEGITIMACY [Including Continuing Mal-appropriate Practices and Behaviors along the Way] The Long Journey of Academic Entrepreneurship During the mid-1970s through the 1980s and 1990s pioneering leaders in academic entrepreneurship had little traction for the creation of legitimacy to establish entrepreneurship as a valid discipline in colleges and universities. When we counseled Ph.D. students regarding publishing to earn tenure we argued against submitting their manuscripts to existing entrepreneurship and small business journals. For example, Ph.D. students and assistant professors were alerted against publishing their research findings and/or theoretical models in such journals as the Journal of Business Venturing, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Journal of Small Business Management, STRATEGY   JOURNAL OF SMALL BUSINESS  Journal of Small Business Strategy Vol. 23, No. 1 2 and Small Business Economics. Once tenured, research papers could be submitted to these reputably “lesser” journals as judged by most business school professors. I sat in on several sessions at the Academy of Management where pioneers such as my mentor Max Wortman led such discussions. In other words, academic entrepreneurship did not fit the traditions and paradigms of the foundational b-school disciplines such as finance, accounting, management science, and to a lesser degree marketing. Academic entrepreneurship would “earn” legitimacy only if it adopted the normal science, database analyzing, econometric modeling paradigm.1 In the narration herein I will argue/show that academic entrepreneurship over the past 30 years has sought and adopted a paradigm that focuses on database2 variations of econometrics, and topics in entrepreneurship where quantitative measures are available [e.g. venture capital, sampled telephone interviewing PSED I and II, standard questions utilized in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor techniques, new federal government databases fomented by Kauffman Foundation lobbying, Initial Public Offerings – IPOs, and an ever increasing set of available databases.) Thomas Kuhn defined a paradigm as a “disciplinary matrix” that includes subject matter content and research methodologies that become the agreed upon standard of the professional group’s shared rules of research.3 In this paper the goal is to provide a concise review about the paradigm that most of the present academic scholars of entrepreneurship increasingly are adopting through the content and research methods that they abdure. Meyer and Monarchi4 are in the final stages of completing a research project covering 32+ years of entrepreneurship publications. We have partnered with Mathematica to develop and utilize a new and unique construct identification technique that elucidates subject matter and research methodologies. From this work we have concluded and will provide evidence that academic entrepreneurship now works with an agreed upon paradigm. In these 32+ years entrepreneurship education and research has travelled from “paradigm sought” to “paradigm found.” [ps-to-pd]. The Meyer and Monarchi report that undergirds the ps-to-pd claim is in its final stage of refinement before a decision will be made about the best forum to publish this research. Given what we have found in academic entrepreneurship regarding (a) current research subject matter and techniques, (b) teaching foci and (c) entrepreneurship program self-promotion, we can assess the “state of the art” of academic entrepreneurship – 2013. In the present paper I will first restate the critique that began with my Coleman Foundation White Paper in 2001 and updated/added to in the Journal of Small Business Management in 2012. This critique includes common patterns in academic entrepreneurship that have “self-organized” [as in Complexity Science] to define the field. The paradigmatic details that Meyer/Monarchi located are not included in this paper due to (a) refinements that are underway within the Meyer and Monarchi data, and (b) my desire to keep the present paper within reasonable page limits. One matter that is addressed later in this paper is the fundamental importance and neglect of the creative and creativity aspect of real/true entrepreneurship. I draw upon Mihali Csikszentmihali’s research on creativity and “flow” to offer a “how to” methodology for doing research on entrepreneurship creativity. Journal of Small Business Strategy Vol. 23, No. 1 3 Two Critiques of Academic Entrepreneurship – 2001 and 2012 Early in the year 2000 the officers of the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship [USASBE] chose me to present the Coleman Foundation White Paper on February 8, 20015. Ten years later the Editor of the Journal of Small Business Management invited me revisit my 2001 White Paper to analyze both change and continuance in academic entrepreneurship. That article was published in January, 20126. This section of this paper is devoted to summarizing what the 2001 and 2012 papers highlighted and then to focus on similarities and changes in ten years; these observations will lead to a later section of this paper that focuses on significant, important factors and processes that are overlooked or eliminated to the detriment of the full promise of academic entrepreneurship. In other words, I am the “curmudgeon” who writes this piece not realizing that a new generation brings an enlightened paradigm that finally establishes academic entrepreneurship as fully legitimate within the norms of the modern academic world. “So it goes” said my personal friend Kurt Vonnegut.7 By 2000 the discipline of academic entrepreneurship had developed into a burgeoning “movement” wherein colleges and universities included entrepreneurship courses in their curricula. Professional Jerry Katz8 kept track of this huge movement that none of the pioneers in the “fight to legitimate” would have come close to predicting. Professional associations were attracting new members; among these the International Council for Small Business [ICSB], USASBE, and the Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management. Legitimacy was being established in highly reputable business schools and universities, among faculty and administrators. Highly respected established faculty members from academic disciplines other than small business and entrepreneurship became interested in entrepreneurship [e.g. sociology, economics, strategic management, engineering and other sciences, creative arts, music et al.] A few Ph.D. programs were focusing on entrepreneurship – for example the Ph.D. program at the University of Colorado – Boulder became the first fully committed Ph.D. program in Entrepreneurship and Strategy. This Ph.D. program was founded by Dale Meyer in 1988 who was also the Chair of the Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management [AOM]. In 2013 the overlap of members in this Entrepreneurship Division is in the range of 75 percent. Eventually the Strategic Management Society [SMS] created an Entrepreneurship and Strategy Interest Group9 and began publishing the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal in December 2007. Dale Meyer’s Coleman White Paper - 2001 The following preliminary statement introduced the domain of this paper and talk: “This presentation begins with the premise that high quality education foments change, hopefully for betterment of Individual students and also for society as a whole. It is also argued that the domain of entrepreneurship education is creation – as Venkataraman10 stated ‘how opportunities to bring into existence future goods and services are discovered, created, and exploited, … but we must ask: 1. Who are the teachers? How well qualified are they to teach high quality courses in entrepreneurship? Journal of Small Business Strategy Vol. 23, No. 1 4 2. How valid are the ‘reputational rankings’ of entrepreneurship programs? 3. Should entrepreneurship education be only the ‘property’ of business schools/colleges? 4. How do we measure entrepreneurship education outputs? 5. How do we continue to counter colleagues who are against or deeply skeptical about the validity of entrepreneurship as an academic discipline?” Several observations are relevant to the questions that were posed in the five categories listed above: (1) An increasing number of new Ph.D.s matriculate from a larger number of Ph.D. programs in entrepreneurship. However, very few of the new professors have experience in small business or entrepreneurship, adjunct instructors who are or have been entrepreneurs still teach the majority of entrepreneurship classes – often in excellent fashion – but mostly “wing it” without much coaching or workshops taught by “master teachers.” More dedicated training of all teachers of entrepreneurship does not appear to be a high priority. (2) Magazine rankings have increased in numbers, the criteria for these rankings are highly questionable, and the brochures and other promotions of entrepreneurship programs and centers place rankings front-and-center as great achievements. Much bombastic egoism is involved in the magazine ranking “game.” In fact rankings have grown as criteria for measuring “success” of academic entrepreneurship. (3) Although “cross-campus” and departmental entrepreneurship education is increasing, B- Schools and selected but excellent Engineering Colleges still dominate. Given the now recognized crisis of unemployed and/or underemployed college graduates, some B-Schools are creating “minors” in entrepreneurship. (4) Of the five queries presented in the 2001 Coleman White Paper, one stands out as almost completely ignored. Only one rigorous, admirable, and useful study that tracks entrepreneurship graduates continuously was developed (and presents regular reports) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT]. MIT measures businesses founded, revenues and profits produced, GDP and wealth created, and provides detailed feedback about the practical influence of their entrepreneurship education programming.11 Perhaps other entrepreneurship programs conduct continuous follow-up rigorous research that validates results from entrepreneurship education programs. Yet, little is known about any reported results. If the data were available, there is no doubt that these studies would be circulated for public relations and/or recruitment purposes. What is presented, mostly at academic meetings, are single cases or a few examples, told to lift the reputations of professors and their entrepreneurship programs. Mostly such presentations are “look at me” ego talk. (5) Validation of the legitimacy of academic entrepreneurship is now accepted. Student demand for entrepreneurship courses, large donations from wealthy entrepreneurs for naming schools of business and entrepreneurship centers and creating endowed academic chairs have put legitimacy, at least temporarily, to bed. Sometime in the future it will take MIT- type data to maintain academic entrepreneurship legitimacy. The Reinvention of Academic Entrepreneurship in January 2012 The previously mentioned Journal of Business Venturing article/essay begins with the following introduction: Journal of Small Business Strategy Vol. 23, No. 1 5 “In the heat of the long ‘battle’ advocating the legitimacy of academic entrepreneurship, few, if any, of the early advocates predicted the swarm of colleges and universities that now embrace the academic entrepreneurship discipline. Present and growing, academic departments, hybrid departments, institutes, centers, and even one encompassing “school” now focus on academic entrepreneurship. . . . My focus here, however, is on a number of “elephants in the room.” Keep in mind that 11 years had passed since the Coleman White Paper critique. The continuing “elephants” found some overlap but this article/essay framed the issues differently. Five continuing “elephants” were not only introduced but strengthened by illustrations and examples that, no doubt, agitated the “in-charge” coteries of leading marquee paradigm setters. The five “elephants” were presented with change in mind as we were now into the second decade of the 21st Century. 1. “… is it not about time that rigorous measurements of results and accountability be required?” Magazine reputational rankings are a poor substitute for measuring actual accomplishments over time. 2. “. . . academic entrepreneurship is constrained by old paradigms that are primarily products of neoclassical economics and its attendant theories.” My point is that when one examines carefully the scholars and academic jargon utilized in these efforts at entrepreneurship theory building, it is apparent that economic theory is the overwhelming backbone of what is presented and published.” [Note FYI: Dale Meyer was the first ever Ph.D. earned in what is now labeled “behavioral economics”, taking comprehensive exams in three disciplines: industrial organization economics, social psychology, and the philosophy of science. I never revealed this until I researched this for a long period of time and found it to be true.] 3. The standard processes of publishing at the “altar of academic journals leading to tenure” is a prison that disallows truly long-term personal interactive research [often named “longitudinal” at the end of articles that note it is needed for validation – however, it never occurs due to the “prison rules”. 4. Today’s normal science emphasizes “database dances” that utilize and depend on impersonal, often incorrect secondary data, to show “models” that are pronounced valid even though they do not serve humanity in any way. 5. Real entrepreneurs are creative and engage in creation; with few exceptions this aspect of entrepreneurship teaching and research are seldom the subjects of academic entrepreneurship. B-Schools create departments that are organized imitations of corporate functional departments. I argue the following: “Bureaucracy is the mortal enemy of entrepreneurship. Corporations are bureaucracies. B-School professors internalize corporate processes through corporate departmentalization. B-Schools themselves become bureaucracies. Entrepreneurship is about the creative and creation. Therefore, B-Schools cannot appropriately teach entrepreneurship.” So, why wouldn’t B-School faculty be obsessed with Journal of Small Business Strategy Vol. 23, No. 1 6 Business Plan courses as the ubiquitous unifying basis for course and curricular development? The “paradigm found” in academic entrepreneurship is intertwined with items 2, 3, 4, and 5 above. I have chosen to focus on two “elephants” that are living in the elucidation offered above in this paper: First, a succinct overview of a classic personalized study of creative people by Mihali Csikszentmihali, and second, the linguistic construct of “Semantic Bleaching” as it relates the entrepreneurship terminology. Entrepreneurship and Creativity It was a pleasure indeed to team-teach the annual USASBE Doctoral Consortium from its inception to 2011. I became interested in the continuing career development of the Ph.D. students after they worked with us in that Consortium/Colloquium. Actually, that interest was imprinted by the 43 Ph.D. students whose dissertations I chaired in my years at the University of Colorado – Boulder. One of the Doctoral Consortium students became quite interested in the many definitions of entrepreneurship that have been proposed in the past to the present. She decided to research a large sample of definitions of entrepreneurship in textbooks, journal articles, newspapers, and magazines. She utilized over 130 definitions and used Latent Semantic Indexing to extract the common words and phrases that define entrepreneurship. She found that the words “creative”, “creativity”, and “creation” were found in entrepreneur and entrepreneurship definitions in 95 percent those researched. This study contributed to her teaching and focused her research creativity factors among entrepreneurs. This finding is enough to convince me that realistic research in entrepreneurship must directly examine the creative aspects of entrepreneurship. However, as academic entrepreneurship research has moved from “paradigm sought to paradigm found” one finds an increasing paucity of journal articles and books that focus on creativity. Since creativity databases are few, if any, research about the creativity aspects of entrepreneurship do not fit the new research paradigm. A classic study of creative people was undertaken and published by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. The next section of this paper is presented as a model for doing research about creativity and entrepreneurs. Undertaking such studies seems impossible for academic entrepreneurship researchers due to the magnet of tenure and then for publishing journal articles in rapid fire frequency. Studying real entrepreneurs is greatly needed but “database dances” are quicker – even though such “coarse- grained” research almost always lacks practicality compared to “fine-grained” personal research. Academics are forced to obey the laws and timelines of tenure and promotions. In addition, entrepreneurship research based on Csikszentmihali’s creativity and “flow” methodology could bridge the present chasm between real entrepreneurs’ needs and academic publications. That chasm will become wider as the new research paradigm gains even more momentum. Ponder the minimal practical influence of the “imperial social science” of economics on real world macroeconomic crises. [They actually use the word “imperial”.] Creative People – Who Are They and How They Became So The following describes Czikzentmihali’s creativity definitions and the research that became his books titled Creativity12 and Flow13. “Creativity is some sort of mental activity, an insight that occurs in inside the heads of Journal of Small Business Strategy Vol. 23, No. 1 7 some special people. . . creativity is an idea or action that is new and valuable.” [p. 23]14. . . creativity in a given place at a given time does not depend only on the amount of individual creativity. It depends just as much on how well suited respective domains and fields are to the recognition and diffusion of novel ideas15. Most investigations focus on the creative person, believing that by understanding how his or her mind works, the key to creativity will be found. But this is not necessarily the case. For though it is true that behind every new idea or product there is a person, it does not follow that such persons have a single characteristic responsible for the novelty16. A person who wants to make a creative contribution not only must work within a creative system but must also reproduce that system within his or her mind. In other words, the person must learn the rules and the content of the domain, as well as the criteria of selection, the preferences of the field. [p. 47]17 [gem: this is akin to Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon’s axiom that to be creative takes approximately 50,000 “chunks” of knowledge and 10 years of experience]. The Ten Dimensions of the Creative Person – Complex Personalities Csikszentmihali conducted a study of 91 individuals who were identified as among the most creative in their work or profession. These “creatives” were identified by informed people in the careers or professions. Csikszentmihali spent limitless hours conversing with the chosen 91. He used both structured and open-ended interviews to capture what makes these creative people “tick.” The goal of this interpersonal activity focuses on how they think, learn, and how new ideas come into their consciousness. They also discussed whether any or many “mystical” [intuitional] thoughts have fomented creative ideas and concepts that became productive. These interviews and questionnaires took about 18 months to complete – notice that most academics are (a) too busy to spend this much time on interviewing, deeply internalizing who these people are how they find and utilize their creative selves, and (b) prefer to sit in front of computers using programs such as SAS, SPSS, or Stata to test databases to find significant relationships through statistical computing. The following are the primary characteristics that Csikzentmihali discovered about the 91 chosen creative people. One primary finding is that highly creative people have multifarious other characteristics that are unpredictable. Is the same true of successful entrepreneurs? Should Csikszentmihali’s research design be utilized to study similar or distinctive characteristics, mental processes, and creativity? Why not? It has not been done to date. Do coarse-grained database dances increasingly eliminate such research as the new research paradigm dominates? This is My Explanation of the Mihali Deep Study of Creative People 18 We are going to overview:  the real characteristics of creative persons;  the interesting part;  the tortured souls;  the impossible dreams;  the agony and ecstasy of creative One needs to remember that creativity is the property of a complex system, and none of its components can explain it alone. The personality of an individual who is to do something creative must adapt to the:  particular domain Journal of Small Business Strategy Vol. 23, No. 1 8  the variances from domain to domain The point is that you cannot assume the mantle of creativity just by assuming a certain personality style. (i.e. Picasso or Steve Jobs, etc.) One can be creative by burning the candle at both ends [busily “out there”] or living like a monk. If we had to express in one word what makes their creative personalities different from other people it would be COMPLEXITY. . . Creative people contain contradictory extremes – instead of being an “individual” each of them is a “multitude” [akin to Multiple Personality Disorder, i.e. Sybil’s 12 personalities.] Like the color white that includes all the hues in the spectrum, creative individuals live in the entire range of human possibilities, mostly within themselves. These qualities are present in all of us, but usually we are trained to develop only one pole of the dialectic. . . A creative individual is more likely to be both:  aggressive and cooperative either at the same time or different times;  and express the full range of traits potentially in the human repertoire, whereas this array in uncreative people atrophies because we think that one or the other pole is “good” whereas the other is “bad”. This is not so for the creative person. The creative person has many traits in common with Carl Jung’s “mature personality”. That construct points out that every one of our strong characteristics has a repressed shadow side that most of us refuse to acknowledge. Examples are, (a) an orderly person who longs to be spontaneous, (b) a submissive person who wishes to be dominant, etc. As long as we disown these shadows, we can never be whole or satisfied. Yet that is what we usually do, and so we keep on struggling against ourselves, trying to live up to an image that distorts our true being. Very creative people live out their many “shadows” [usually without becoming sociopathic!]. A complex personality does not imply neutrality, or the average. It is not some position at the midpoint between two poles. It does not imply, for instance, being wishy- washy, so that one is never very competitive or very cooperative. Rather it involves the ability to move from one extreme to the other as the occasion requires. Perhaps a central position, a golden mean, is the place of choice, what software writers call the default condition. But creative persons definitely know both extremes and experience both with equal intensity and without inner conflict. The study investigated the creative personalities of 91 individuals who were culled by numerous other people in several fields: (1) Arts and Humanities [historians, media, performers and composers, philosophers and critics, writers], (2) Sciences (biologists, physicians, chemists, economists, physicists, astronomers, social scientists, psychologists, and (3) Business and Politics (activists, business – no entrepreneurs!), inventors, politicians (only ones elected). A rigorous interview protocol was utilized in this study. I can find no study in academic entrepreneurship research that has replicated this study. Please inform me if you know of something comparable Journal of Small Business Strategy Vol. 23, No. 1 9 [Sarasvathy’s study is not quite the same as I understand it, but her research is “up front and personal” which is where I would direct meaningful research unhooked from the “religious doctrine” of tenure]. Ten Antithetical Traits Found in Mihali’s Study19 1. Creative individuals have a great deal of physical energy, work very long hours, with great concentration, while projecting an aura of freshness and enthusiasm. Yet it is surprising how often individuals in their seventies and eighties exude energy and health but remember a childhood plagued by illness. . . It seems that the energy of these people is internally generated and is due more to their focused minds than to superiority of their genes. . . . their energy is under their own control – it is not controlled by the calendar, the clock, or an external schedule. 2. Creative individuals tend to be smart, yet also naïve at the same time. . . they possess what psychologists call the g factor – meaning a core of general intelligence. . . IQs not in the high levels such as 170+ but rather strong in the 120 range but higher scores do not necessarily imply higher creativity. . . thinking is both convergent and divergent where convergent is solving well- defined rational problems, and divergent involves fluency, the ability to generate a great quantity of ideas, flexibility, the ability to switch from one perspective to another, originality in picking unusual associations of ideas. Ability to originate novel ideas. 3. Creative individuals evidence a paradoxical combination of playfulness and discipline, responsibility and irresponsibility. The playfulness is not quite joking, but has some of the lightness of joking. . . has been called “detached attachment”. . . But this playfulness doesn’t go far without its antithesis, the quality of doggedness, endurance, perseverance. [in my own experience: focus, persistence, patience]. Another way of looking at this paradox is that creative “wonderful wild ideas and then a lot of hard work that evolves into the “flow”. 4. Creative individuals alternate between imagination and fantasy at one end, and a rooted sense of reality at the other. Both are needed to break away from the present without losing touch with the past.. . . in Rorschach or Thematic Apperception Tests creative artists gave responses that are more original, with unusual, colorful, detailed elements but never bizarre. Normal people are rarely original, but they are sometimes bizarre. . . for creative people the novelty they see is rooted in reality. . . . however, when a person begins to work creatively, all bets are off – the artist may be as much a realist as the physicist, and the physicist as imaginative as the artist [Einstein as portrayed by Walter Isacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe. 2007. (New York: Simon and Schuster)20 . . [What Einstein implied about art and science is an Journal of Small Business Strategy Vol. 23, No. 1 10 evolutionary process. .and one must be on the alert for the shape of things to come.] 5. Creative individuals seem to harbor opposite tendencies on the continuum between extroversion and introversion. Creative people seem to express both traits at the same time. But the stereotype of “solitary genius” is strong and gets ample support from our interviews. After all, one must generally be alone in order to write, paint, or do experiments in the laboratory. . . practicing music or studying math requires solitude. . . Yet, over and over again, the importance of seeing people, exchanging ideas, and getting to know another person’s work and mind are stressed by creative individuals. 6. Creative people are also remarkably humble and proud at the same time. It is remarkable to meet a famous person whom you expect to be arrogant and supercilious, only to encounter self-deprecation and shyness instead [in my own observations.] . . . at the same time . . . they know that in comparison with others they have accomplished a great deal. And this knowledge provides a sense of security, even pride. This is often expressed as a sense of self- assurance. . . Some individuals stress humility, others self- assurance . . . but of the people interviewed they had a good dose of both. . . another way of expressing this duality is to see it as a contrast between ambition and selflessness. It is often necessary for creative individuals to be ambitious and aggressive. Yet at the same time, they are often willing to subordinate their own personal comfort and advancement to the success of whatever project they are working on. Nobel Laureate George Stigler: “Every scholar, I think, is aggressive in some sense. He has to be aggressive if he wants to change his discipline. Now, if you get a Keynes or Friedman, they are also aggressive in that they want to change the world, and so they become splendid public figures as well. But that is a very hard game to play.” And author Sarah Levine states: “Up until quite recently [age 51] I used to think of production only for greater glory for myself, really. I don’t see it that way at all anymore. I mean, it’s nice if one gets recognition for what one does, but much more important is to leave something that other people can learn about, and I suppose that comes with middle age.” 7. Creative individuals to a certain extent escape rigid gender stereotyping. . . . This tendency toward androgyny is sometimes understood purely in sexual terms; therefore it gets confused with homosexuality. But psychology androgyny is a much wider concept, referring to a person’s ability to be at the same time aggressive and nurturant, sensitive and rigid, dominant and submissive, regardless of gender. . . . “Femininity of the men in the sample was their great preoccupation with their family Journal of Small Business Strategy Vol. 23, No. 1 11 and their sensitivity to subtle aspects of the environment that other men are inclined to dismiss as unimportant. 8. Generally, creative people are thought to be rebellious and independent. Yet it is impossible to be creative without having first internalized a domain of culture. And a person must believe in the importance of culture in order to learn its rules. . . . True creative people are at the same time rebellious and iconoclastic but also culturally traditional and conservative. . . . Artist Eva Zeisel states: “A negative impulse is always frustrating. And to be different means not like this and not like that. And ‘not like’ – that’s why postmodernism with the prefix of ‘post’ couldn’t work. No negative impulse can work, can produce any happy creation. Only a positive one.” And, again, George Stigler Nobel Prize economist states: “I’d say one of the most common failures of able people is a lack of nerve. They’ll play safe games. They’ll take whatever the literature’s doing and add a little to it. In our field [economics], for example, we study duopoly [when there are only two sellers]. Then why not try three and see what that does. So there’s a safe game to play. In innovation, you have to play a less safe game, or it’s going to be interesting. It’s not predictable that it’ll go well.” 9. Most creative people are passionate about their work, yet they can be extremely objective as well. . . . Without the passion we soon lose interest in a difficult task. Yet without being objective about it, our work is not very good and lacks credibility. So the creative process tends to be what some respondents called yin-yang alteration between these two extremes. [In my own experience, I simply detested being the Department Chair!] 10. Finally, openness and sensitivity of creative individuals often exposes them to suffering and pain yet also a great deal of enjoyment. . . . The greater sensitivity can cause slights and anxieties that are not usually felt by the rest of us. . . . Being alone at the forefront of a discipline also makes one exposed and vulnerable. Eminence invites criticism and often vicious attacks. . . . Ever since the Romantic Movement gained ascendance a few centuries ago, artists have been expected to suffer in order to demonstrate the sensitivity of their soul. In fact, research shows that artists and writers do have unusually high rates of psychopathy and addictions [and recent research shows that this is true of college professors in general]. . . . It is also true that deep interest and involvement in obscure subjects [like the pioneers in academic entrepreneurship greatly faced] often goes unrewarded, or even brings on ridicule. Divergent thinking is often perceived as deviant by the majority, and so the creative person may feel isolated and misunderstood. These occupational hazards do come with the territory, so to speak, and it is difficult to see how a person could be creative and at the same time insensitive to Journal of Small Business Strategy Vol. 23, No. 1 12 them [in my experience, notice how very close the pioneers in academic entrepreneurship are with each other – friends for life in academe!]. . . Yet, when the creative person is working the area of his or her expertise, worries and cares fall away, replaced by a sense of bliss [per Joseph Campbell]. . . the one that is most consistently present in in all creative individuals, is the ability to enjoy the process of creation for its own sake. In sum, “these ten pairs of contrasting personality traits, disappointment but elation, might be the most telling characteristics of creative people. Of course, this list is to a certain extent arbitrary. It could be argued that many other important orientations have been left out. But what is important to keep in mind is that these conflicting characteristics . . . are difficult to find in the same person. Yet without the second pole, new ideas will not be recognized. And without the first, they will not be developed to the point of acceptance. Therefore, the novelty that survives to change a domain is usually the work of someone [and other creative individuals] who can operate at both ends of these polarities – and that is the kind of person we call ‘creative’. SO IT GOES It is quite exciting, having observed the trail “from paradigm sought to paradigm found” – as one who has witnessed and participated in this long journey. I am simply thrilled. The unpredictable upswing seems mostly a self-organizing system of ubiquitous interest and action in entrepreneurship. Kuhn argued that paradigms sometimes change slowly and sometimes quickly. The present paradigm that seems to be in place will certainly be criticized as a new generation of scholars enters leadership ranks. The “semantic bleaching” of the word entrepreneurship argues for more precision about the domain of this academic discipline. For example, earlier B-schools – before the Gordon Howell and other criticisms took hold – offered small business management courses on a regular basis. Entrepreneurship and small business are really two distinct domains. The critique that I offered in this paper will be archaic sometime in the future – and is so to some readers already. As always, the whole world is dynamic and higher education is presently changing rather dramatically with the advent of the MOOC world. Enjoy the ride and periodic changing results. REFERENCES 1Thomas S. Kuhn. 1996 Third Edition. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, pp. 10, 15, 18-19, 23, 43-44, 182- 191. 2Two prominent sociologists who are distinguished pioneers in academic entrepreneurship – Professor Howard Aldrich at the University of North Carolina and Professor Paul Reynolds at George Washington University have been avid advocates for normal science and database research. Paul Reynolds and a dedicated team developed the PSED I and II databases, refined the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor database and created the Global Entrepreneurship Research and Policy Conference at George Washington University – 4th annual in October 2013 that focuses mostly on available and new entrepreneurship databases. Professor Aldrich has been a Journal of Small Business Strategy Vol. 23, No. 1 13 critic of entrepreneurship for not emphasizing Normal Science e.g. Howard E. Aldrich. 1992. “Methods in Our Madness? Trends in Entrepreneurship Research.” Pp. 191-213 in Donald L. Sexton and John D. Kasarda (eds.), The State of the Art of Entrepreneurship. Boston: PWS-Kent Publishing. Professor Aldrich critiqued entrepreneurship research several other times – and found inadequate the methodologies that were applied. 3Kuhn, pp. 182-191. 4G. Dale Meyer and David Monarchi. 2013. A 32+ Year Analysis of Academic Entrepreneurship: Research Content and Designs in Published Journals. 5G. Dale Meyer. 2001. Major Unresolved Issues and Opportunities in Entrepreneurship Education. Chicago: Coleman Foundation and USASBE Archives. 6G. Dale Meyer. January, 2011. The Reinvention of Academic Entrepreneurship. Journal of Small Business Management, 49(1): 1-8. 7Kurt Vonnegut. 1969. Slaughterhouse- Five: A Novel. New York: Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence 8Katz, J. A. 2008. Fully Mature But Not Legitimate: A Different Perspective on the State of Entrepreneurship Education. Journal of Small Business Management, 46(4), 550-556. 9G. Dale Meyer. 2009. Commentary: On the Integration of Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship: Views of a Contrarian. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 35(1): 341- 351. 10Edward B. Roberts and Charles Eesley, 2009. Entrepreneurial Impact: The Role of MIT. Kauffman Foundation with copyright by Edward B. Roberts 11Mihaly Csikszentmihali. 1996. Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York: Harper Collins. 12Mihaly Csikszentmihali. 1990. Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper Collins 13S. Venkataraman. 1997. The distinctive domain of entrepreneurship research: An editor’s perspective. In J. Katz and R. Brockhaus (Eds.),Advances in entrepreneurship, firm emergence, and growth. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. 14Csikszentmihali, “Flow the Psychology of Optimal Experience,” p.23 15Ibid. p.31 16Ibid. p.45 17Ibid.p.47 18Csikszentmihali, “Creativity:Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention,” p.55-76 19This section is abstracted from pp. 55-76, Csikszentmihali Journal of Small Business Strategy Vol. 23, No. 1 14 20Einstein: His Life and Universe. 2007. New York:Simon and Schuster. Dale Meyer (University of Colorado Boulder) joined the business faculty as an assistant professor in 1970, and currently holds the Anderson Professorship of Strategy and Entrepreneurial Development. He has received numerous teaching awards at Colorado University, including the Hazel Barnes Prize, the campus’ highest honor for teaching and research. Meyer is a prolific scholar with 50 refereed journal articles, 58 refereed papers and 15 invited papers at professional conferences, and 52 technical reports to his credit. He has won two "best journal article" awards and five "best paper proceedings" awards. He has served as president, vice president, chair or board member of 17 professional associations and served on numerous committees and panels. He holds a bachelor's degree in economics and psychology from Northwestern University, a master's in economics from Northern Illinois University, and a doctorate in business from the University of Iowa. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.