Evidence-based Entrepreneurship : Cumulative Science, Action Principles, and Bridging the Gap Between Science and Practice

Evidence-Based Entrepreneurship provides a great opportunity that is relevant for practice and policy while strengthening the empirical and theoretical bases of entrepreneurship research. Practice can never be fully based on evidence; therefore, we talk about evidence-informed practice and evidence-based research suggestions. Both management and entrepreneurship show a gap between knowledge and practice ¿ the knowledge-doing gap. Managers as well as entrepreneurs or professionals who deal with entrepreneurs often fail to take note of scientific evidence when making decisions and empirical research has shown that managers often take actions that are uninformed and sometimes even diametrically opposed to empirical evidence. In the area of entrepreneurship, one can often hear open disdain for scholarly work because professors have not yet ¿made their first million¿ ¿ the foremost argument seems to be that only experience counts. We suggest that professionals who deal with entrepreneurs can profit from evidence-informed practice.