Experiments on Entrepreneurial Decision Making: A Different Lens Through Which to Look at Entrepreneurship

In this paper, we propose that researchers might analyze key questions in entrepreneurship as problems of decision making. We believe that this allows for new insights. Experiments are especially suited to empirically test hypotheses derived within such a framework. In this paper, we thus introduce the decision-making perspective as well as general characteristics of the experimental method. We also discuss existing experimental studies in entrepreneurship with respect to the use of a decision-making perspective and specifics of their experimental designs. Finally, we present “research cases” that demonstrate the shift in perspective that occurs when common questions in entrepreneurship are analyzed through the lens of decision making. We conclude that entrepreneurial decision making (EDM) bears the potential of a scientific paradigm. This paper is intended to stimulate theory development to establish such a paradigm and (experimental) research within the perspective of EDM.