Keywords

Scholars publish papers to further knowledge and, in doing so, influence subsequent research. However, papers vary in their quality and impact both within and across researchers. A paper’s quality is indicated by its statement of contribution (Locke & Golden-Biddle, 1997), the depth and reasoning of its theoretical arguments (Whetten, 1989), the suitability of its research methods (Colquitt & Zapata-Phelan, 2007), and so on. A paper’s impact, on the other hand, is typically reflected by different citation measures (Adler & Harzing, 2009; Aguinis et al., 2012, 2014) and by the reputation of the journal in which it is published (Palacios-Huerta & Volij, 2004; Podsakoff et al., 2018). Despite an ongoing debate over which of these metrics should be more or less dominant in evaluating research papers’ quality and impact (e.g., Aguinis et al., 2014; Starbuck, 2005; Wright et al., 2020), overall, a considerable literature has discussed criteria for determining the types of papers that advance scholars’ careers and the scholarly field.

However, although there are countless exemplars of quality and impactful papers, less has been documented about how to produce such scholarship (Aguinis et al., 2014). Indeed, while the research and writing processes underlying paper development are ostensibly learned throughout the many years of Ph.D. training and the deliberate practice of writing research papers, many scholars still struggle to generate multiple papers of both high quality and high impact (Connelly, 2020). For instance, the Academy of Management Journal put out an important series of editorials discussing how scholars can write individual papers to improve their odds of being published in top journals. Other journals have given similar editorial advice. Similarly, Podsakoff et al. (2018) advised Ph.D. students and junior faculty on how to create and publish high-impact papers (i.e., swing for the fences vis-à-vis play small ball).

Nevertheless, these editorials offer little guidance to scholars on how to develop a portfolio of numerous high-quality, high-impact papers that fulfill journals’ publishing criteria. Developing such a portfolio of papers is a difficult task (Connelly, 2020) due to the limited attention scholars can allocate across their varied projects and academic roles (Aguinis & Vaschetto, 2011), the unpredictable and noisy nature of the review process in terms of the outcome and speed of publication decisions (Clark et al., 2016; Peters & Ceci, 1980), the uncertainty of outcomes from data collection and analysis (Hill et al., 2020), and the reliance on coauthors who may differ in the time they have available for a specific project (Ketchen, 2016). Still, taking a portfolio perspective on producing high-quality, high-impact papers is important because scholars’ career advancement rarely depends on a single paper; rather, tenure and promotion decisions are usually based on a scholar’s overall impact (e.g., as captured by the number of citations or the h-index [Mingers, 2009]).

Thus, in this chapter, we outline an entrepreneurial approach to generating a portfolio of multiple high-quality, high-impact papers. To do so, we take the entrepreneurship principles of lean startup for generating new ventures and adapt them to lean scholarship. By lean scholarship, we mean iterative experimentation, stakeholder engagement, and collective learning in developing a portfolio of papers. Our lean scholarship framework also includes many practical recommendations for researchers hoping to better manage their research processes.

Further, this chapter makes three main theoretical contributions. First, prior work has provided valuable insights into how to develop individual papers of high quality and high impact (e.g., Colquitt & George, 2011; Podsakoff et al., 2018; Shepherd & Wiklund, 2020). We go one step further by presenting an entrepreneurial approach for developing a portfolio of high-quality papers with (potentially) high impact and for managing such a portfolio rather than focusing on improving a single paper. Second, an important research stream has investigated the antecedents of scholars’ research productivity, including their institutional affiliation (Long et al., 2017), the productivity of scholars’ dissertation advisors (Williamson & Cable, 2003), and the time they can devote to research (White et al., 2012). These studies have generally emphasized the importance of the context in which a researcher is embedded; however, we identify entrepreneurial mindset as an individual-level factor that may trigger scholars’ research productivity within their contexts (especially in resource-constrained [time- and money-constrained] environments). As we discuss, thinking entrepreneurially can aid scholars in generating and managing a portfolio of papers. Finally, despite the lean startup framework being rooted in entrepreneurial practice (Ries, 2011), we propose this framework can be adapted to facilitate entrepreneurship in academia. With our lean scholarship model, we extend the lean startup logic by applying it to theorizing on scholarship and, in particular, generating a portfolio of papers. We present concrete practices so scholars can implement the lean scholarship approach for their own research endeavors.

A Framework for Lean Scholarship

Building on the lean startup framework for practitioners (Ries, 2011; Shepherd & Gruber, 2021), we propose lean scholarship as one possible approach to producing a portfolio of high-quality, high-impact papers. What we present is not a secret elixir but a framework—significant work is still required in the spaces within the framework to achieve the desired outcomes. Importantly, we want to stress that lean scholarship is only one possible approach to generating numerous high-quality, high-impact papers, and as we discuss below, scholars will vary in how valuable they find this approach for their own work. Figure 6.1 illustrates our lean scholarship framework (see Shepherd & Patzelt, 2022). To start, lean scholarship requires an entrepreneurial mindset. With this mindset, a researcher then generates a set of potential research opportunities and then chooses one of those opportunities to pursue further. This pursuit entails developing a minimum viable paper and then considering the validity of its underlying assumptions to determine the plausibility of the paper. If the paper is plausible, the researcher exploits the potential research opportunity and adds it to their portfolio of papers. If the paper is implausible, the researcher ceases and discards the potential research opportunity. In addition, the researcher needs to manage their portfolio of papers, periodically deciding whether to persist with, pivot from, or terminate each paper. When a paper is terminated, the researcher reallocates the respective resources to other potential research opportunities with more promise. Next, we discuss the relationships of the lean scholarship framework followed by the feedback loops (the dashed arrows in Fig. 6.1).

Fig. 6.1
A block diagram illustrates seven steps named entrepreneurial mindset, research opportunities, implement on a viable paper, add to a portfolio, and decide on paper in the portfolio.

Lean scholarship framework [Note From Shepherd and Patzelt (2022)]

Full size image

1 : Starting with an Entrepreneurial Mindset to Guide the Scholarship Process

With an entrepreneurial mindset for lean scholarship, a scholar’s attention is focused on finding and assessing multiple new potential research opportunities and pursuing only the best of these opportunities to advance the focal scholarly conversation while terminating the least promising opportunities. These potential research opportunities may be local or distant to the scholar. Local opportunities are closely related to the existing scholarly conversation the scholar is engaged in, whereas distant opportunities entail a creative jump from the focal scholarly conversation, perhaps one involving a previously untapped theory in the literature stream in which the scholarly conversation is embedded. More distant research opportunities generally have more potential to make a novel, high-impact contribution compared to local opportunities because they may initiate a completely new scholarly conversation instead of merely adding to an ongoing conversation in a more mature field. For example, Scott (2005: 476) described how he connected distant literatures in recounting his contribution to institutional theory:

Within organization studies, I see and have attempted to cultivate connections between institutional theory and such diverse areas as strategy, entrepreneurship, health care management, human resources, international management, management history, organizational cognition, organization structure and change, organizations, and the natural environment, and public and nonprofit forms. Beyond the field of organizational studies, I have worked to develop and demonstrate the connections between institutional theory and closely related areas of study, such as law and society (Scott, 1994), policy analysis (Scott, 2002), and social movements. (McAdam and Scott, 2005)

In a similar vein, the missions of top journals call for paper submissions that are “original... [and] theoretically bold” (Academy of Management Journal) and center on “the discovery and analysis of new phenomena [and] new theoretical accounts” (Administrative Science Quarterly).

However, although an entrepreneurial mindset focuses researchers’ attention on finding and assessing multiple new and potentially distant opportunities, researchers likely vary in their ability to develop such a mindset, thus leading to some being less able to take the lean scholarship approach. Particularly, an entrepreneurial mindset for the lean scholarship requires scholars to have cognitive adaptability so they can understand distant domains/literatures and determine how these domains/literatures can inform knowledge and ultimately advance the focal scholarly conversation. Cognitive adaptability is “the ability to effectively and appropriately evolve or adapt decision policies (i.e., to learn) given feedback (inputs) from the environmental context in which cognitive processing is embedded” (Haynie et al., 2012: 238). This ability is associated with an enhanced decision-making in complex, dynamic, and inherently uncertain contexts (Earley & Ang, 2003). Indeed, lean scholarship requires scholars to embrace the distant, uncertain, and complex phenomena underlying potential research opportunities and thus develop cognitive adaptability to understand, combine, and translate this information into potential research opportunities. Accordingly, cognitive adaptability is crucial to the entrepreneurial mindset needed for the lean scholarship approach.

2 and 3: Creating a Set of Potential Research Opportunities and Choosing One to Pursue

When starting a new venture, entrepreneurs tend to perform better when they generate a large set of potential opportunities and then select one to exploit instead of simply pursuing the first potential opportunity they identify (or making a selection from a small set of similar options) (Gruber et al., 2008). Likewise, with lean scholarship, scholars generate a set of potential research opportunities and then select one to exploit for their next project. Although it may seem costly in terms of time to generate a set of potential research opportunities like this, this step in the lean scholarship approach helps researchers rank potential research opportunities. With a large set of opportunities (e.g., five to nine), researchers can be assured that they have been comprehensive and can be comfortable with their final choice. The non-lean approach, on the other hand, involves beginning with one potential research opportunity (or a small set of potential opportunities) and satisficing—namely, selecting a research opportunity that is satisfactory and sufficient. However, satisficing often leaves researchers wondering if they actually chose the “best” potential research opportunity.

Thus, although lean scholarship does not provide specific criteria for choosing a potential research opportunity from a set (but can accommodate such choice criteria), it does provide scholars a process for choosing their next project that is thorough (i.e., includes multiple potential research opportunities) and builds confidence (because it is thorough and includes back-up alternatives from the set) to pursue the next steps of lean scholarship. For example, before beginning to develop the idea for the paper underlying this chapter, Dean Shepherd wrote a list with several potential research opportunities, explored each idea a little, and then selected the best potential research opportunity from the list (while also considering the other paper projects in his portfolio). At the time, Dean’s portfolio had some deductive papers on different topics, some inductive papers on entrepreneurship as a response to adversity, and some deductive empirical papers on founders and venture teams. While he had published previous papers on scholarship, the paper underlying this chapter was a chance for him to contribute to helping others contribute through their research. Dean realized this particular opportunity was a risky choice (because it did not constitute a “standard” paper and the publication home was not clear initially), but he also saw it would fill a hole in his portfolio of papers. Specifically, it represented an opportunity for him to think more deeply about his own scholarship and then share what he learned with others. Even if it was not published, writing the paper would have likely helped Dean produce more high-quality, high-impact papers in the future.

4 : Building a Minimum Viable Paper

In the lean startup framework for practitioners, entrepreneurs create minimum viable products to learn about and refine (and significantly change if necessary) their potential opportunities (Ries, 2011). A minimum viable product is a type of prototype with enough features to demonstrate to potential customers what the final product would look like and how it would work. Therefore, it serves as a tool for learning: the focal entrepreneur allows potential customers to use the product, collects feedback on the product based on how these customers use it, and then utilizes this feedback to improve and finalize the product (Ries, 2011). In line with this notion, we propose the idea of a minimum viable paper. A minimum viable paper is a representation of a potential research opportunity that is sufficient enough (i.e., involves a minimum investment of resources, including time) to enable the researcher to gauge others’ reactions to and learn about the plausibility of the underlying opportunity. The audience for a such paper includes other scholars engaged in the focal conversation as well as potential reviewers from the targeted journal. As such, a minimum viable paper is some type of outline of the potential research opportunity.Footnote 1

In contrast to scholars taking the non-lean approach of receiving tough love on a full draft of a paper before journal submission, the lean scholar develops a minimum viable paper to engage an audience comprising builders rather than critics, optimists rather than pessimists, and authors rather than reviewers. Such an audience accepts the “minimum” nature of this representation of the potential research opportunity and understands its purpose in stimulating discussion and learning to determine how to refine (or otherwise change) what may become a full-blown paper. This constructive process is grounded in curiosity and exploration and is typically fun and instructive for scholars who approach lean scholarship with an entrepreneurial mindset.

A minimum viable paper can come in many forms: a verbal presentation (with or without PowerPoint slides), a written document, a figure, and so forth. The choice of medium is likely not important per se but rather depends on what the focal scholar considers minimum—namely, a minimum viable paper must be sufficient enough for the scholar to garner feedback (from themselves and others) for learning. No matter how few resources are invested in this process, these resources are wasted if a minimum viable paper does not facilitate learning. However, when too many resources are invested into a minimum viable paper (i.e., above the minimum, which many scholars do), two negative implications arise: (1) the focal researcher has used more resources than necessary—a waste—and (2) the researcher has more sunk costs and is thus more reluctant to accept feedback to learn and take the paper in a more promising direction or to terminate the paper when there are signs it is not as appealing as initially thought. Thus, through minimum viable papers, lean scholarship aids scholars in avoiding the natural tendency to escalate commitment to projects they have devoted substantial resources to (consistent with the escalation of commitment bias [see Staw, 1997]). Next, we offer examples of different types of possible minimal viable papers.

A figure as a minimum viable paper. One form a minimum viable paper could take is a graphical representation of a potential research opportunity, such as a diagram, picture, N × N table, sketch, or set of scribbled ideas and notes organized in a certain way. For instance, Mintzberg (2005) explained how he uses diagrams to develop early theoretical ideas:

I use diagrams of all kinds to express the inter-relationships among the concepts I am dealing with. . . . It’s the rendering of this on paper that really gets the ideas flowing in my head. . . . My work is loaded with diagrams, seeking to express every which way how the ideas I am trying to make come together. . . . These diagrams really help me a great deal: I can see it all at a glance, even if outside my head. But not always into other heads.

Such graphical representations can be shared with other scholars to initiate discourse, collect feedback, and learn about the plausibility of a potential research opportunity and its underlying theoretical ideas (Smith & Hitt, 2005). Similarly, Holger Patzelt has a large whiteboard on the wall of his office where he draws diagrams, pictures, or sketches of potential research opportunities. He then discusses these graphical representations with his neighboring colleagues to evaluate the opportunities’ plausibility and decide whether to pursue them.

A preliminary introduction as a minimum viable paper. Another form a minimum viable paper might take is a rough draft of the potential paper’s introduction in terms of what is known about the phenomenon, what is not known, and how the current paper’s approach could fill that knowledge gap (Barney, 2018; Shepherd & Wiklund, 2020). A slightly different version of this approach to developing a minimum viable paper could point out a weakly held assumption within the scholarly community, why/when this assumption does not apply, and why this assumption needs to be replaced. Such a minimum viable paper may, for example, motivate feedback from those within the scholarly community that the assumption is not weakly held but is actually strongly held and applies in ways not previously considered. However, feedback from such a minimum viable paper might reveal that the assumption is weakly held and that there are other contexts in which it “breaks down” as an effective means for an explanation. Regardless of whether the feedback is disconfirming or confirming, such a minimum viable paper serves its role of engendering reactions so the scholar can establish the plausibility of the focal potential research opportunity. For instance, Dean Shepherd developed a rough introduction and basic arguments for the model presented in this chapter to pitch the potential research opportunity to his coauthor Holger. In turn, Holger came back to him with more substantial arguments for and against the model. We then went back and forth as an author team, modifying the model until we felt like we agreed on the nature of the potential research opportunity. We then had to decide whether it was worth taking the next step to develop the paper and refine it for submission to a journal and then further changes to a chapter for this book.

Similarly, Hambrick (2005) described how the idea behind his seminal paper on upper echelons (Hambrick & Mason, 1984) stems back to a seminar paper he had written as an early Ph.D. student but had put aside for a couple of years. After that time, he met Phyllis Mason, with whom he shared and discussed the seminar paper. This collaboration resulted in the two scholars jointly refining the initial paper’s ideas and, ultimately, publishing the coauthored paper in the Academy of Management Review. Since then, the paper has become one of the most influential papers in management research.

A story as a minimum viable paper. A minimum viable paper can also take the form of a story rooted in a phenomenon that conveys the essence of the potential research opportunity. For example, in the following, Weick (1974: 488–489) offered an example that could have resulted in a potential research opportunity (one that had already been exploited):

As a simple example, if one watches people ride on escalators, he will observe that there are times when they walk on the escalator in order to speed up their ride. Now the question is, is there any regularity to this pattern of walking? Informal observation suggests that the following relationship holds: the closer the person is to the end of the escalator ride, the greater the likelihood that he will walk the remaining distance. Stated differently, walking is unlikely at the start of an escalator ride and much more likely near the end of the ride. . . . Neal Miller’s research on conflict behavior is based partially on the following assumption: “The nearer a subject is to a goal, the stronger is his tendency to approach it” (15, p. 424). Is not this precisely what occurs in the case of people riding an escalator? The closer they are to where they want to get, the stronger is their tendency to approach it. This strength is shown by their adding the behavior of walking to the activity of being transported to the goal, which is already underway. Suppose, however, that in thinking about the escalator example, you had explained the regularity in a different manner. Then it is conceivable that you might have developed a formulation that is an alternative to Miller’s formulation. If so, then testing which view makes more accurate predictions in a new situation would improve the understanding of behavior. The point is that this increment to thinking had a humble origin. It all started with simply looking for regularities in everyday events.

In a similar vein, Shepherd (2003) harnessed his experiences with his father and the failure of their family business as the basis for a minimum viable paper. While it is uncommon to include personal motivation in a final paper, he decided to do so in this case, stating,

When our family business died, my father exhibited a number of worrying emotions. There were numbness and disbelief that this business he had created twenty odd years ago was no longer “alive.” There was some anger toward the economy, competitors, and debtors. A stronger emotion than anger was that of guilt and self-blame: he felt guilty that he had caused the failure of the business, that it could no longer be passed on to my brother, and that, as a result, he had failed not only as a businessperson but also as a father. These feelings caused him distress and anxiety. He felt the situation was hopeless and became withdrawn and, at times, depressed. The point was that he was not in the right mindset to automatically and instantaneously learn from his failure experiences. Rather it would take time; it would take a process. (Shepherd, 2003: 320)

A minimum viable paper as a boundary object. No matter what form it takes, it can be helpful to think of a minimum viable paper as a boundary object—namely, as an artifact that “provides a bridge between individuals by triangulating on something in common by facilitating a flow of information and knowledge (Carlile, 2004) and by reducing the time required for sensemaking” (Grichnik et al., 2016: 14). Thus, to serve as a boundary object, a minimum viable paper must be something that focuses the attention of both the focal scholar and their audience on the same information even though they likely perceive, interpret, and integrate knowledge differently. As a boundary object, a minimum viable paper enables all parties to share their perspectives, which in turn structure and accelerate both the scholar’s and the audience’s learning. Accordingly, lean scholarship is enhanced when researchers develop minimum viable papers that are tangible, shareable, and understandable in a way that enables exchange across boundaries (with other scholars in the same field, with scholars from different domains, with practitioners, etc.) for validated learning.

5: Validating Assumptions

Entrepreneurs have to test the assumptions at the core of their startups’ business models (Blank, 2013). For instance, such assumptions could be that a particular group of potential customers would buy a product at a certain price, that these customers would find certain product features valuable, that the focal startup needs to obtain a particular amount of money to develop the final version of the product, and so forth. The lean startup framework for practitioners urges entrepreneurs to explicitly formulate and then validate such assumptions, for example, through interviews with potential customers and other venture stakeholders.

In lean scholarship, scholars validate assumptions to provide evidence (including both confirming and disconfirming evidence) that a potential research opportunity is plausible. From a sensemaking perspective, assumptions are more plausible when they better “tap into an ongoing sense of the current climate, are consistent with other data, facilitate ongoing projects, reduce equivocality, provide an aura of accuracy..., and offer a potentially exciting future” (Weick et al., 2005: 415). Therefore, research can be understood as improving plausibility rather than as producing an outcome (e.g., theorizing as a process rather than generating a theory as an outcome [see Weick, 1995]). By validating assumptions, scholars can gain information about the assumptions underlying a potential research opportunity, thereby enabling them to improve that opportunity’s plausibility (e.g., refine the opportunity), terminate the opportunity, or pivot from the opportunity (see the final stage of the lean scholarship below). Thus, the purpose of validating assumptions in the lean scholarship framework is not to test the hypotheses of a model (these can be tested later in the process for an empirical paper or in subsequent papers for a theory paper); rather, the purpose is to explore whether the assumptions underlying a potential research opportunity are plausible to both oneself and others. As we discussed above, a minimum viable paper may serve this “reality check” function with scholars in the target audience for the final paper.

In addition, lean scholarship examines the most critical assumptions underlying a potential research opportunity as well as whether and how these assumptions can be validated. For example, for his potential research opportunity exploring how entrepreneurs experience and process grief when their businesses fail—triggered by the story of his father and the failure of their family business—Dean (Shepherd, 2003) needed to validate critical assumptions before continuing with that potential research opportunity. Specifically, he had to validate the assumptions that (1) people experience a negative emotional reaction from losing something that is not a family member or friend (i.e., that grief from losing a business is plausible) and (2) experiencing a negative emotional reaction can impede learning (i.e., that learning from failure is not automatic nor instantaneous). In his efforts to (in)validate these assumptions, he studied the distant literature on bereavement, finding that scholars have attributed grief to losses associated with divorce, cardiac surgery, and amputation (thus validating Assumption 1). He also studied research on emotions and cognition, which revealed that negative emotions constrain attention and thinking. Such constraints are inconsistent with the conditions needed to learn from experience (thus validating Assumption 2). Moreover, he explored the validity of these assumptions by studying entrepreneurs’ stories of their experiences with business failure. After validating these critical assumptions and determining that the potential research opportunity was plausible, he constructed a draft of the paper and eventually developed a new research stream.

Lean scholarship also requires scholars to consider how they can best validate assumptions while only investing the minimum amount of resources. These considerations differ from those associated with testing a model’s hypotheses, such as statistical power and representativeness. Rather, scholars need to consider who can help them evaluate the plausibility of the critical assumptions underlying their potential research opportunities. Scholars can often test the validity of their assumptions by simply talking to practitioners about their experiences with the focal topic or by explicitly asking them about these assumptions. For instance, Wiklund reported that when he began studying small businesses, he tested the plausibility of his theoretical assumptions and hypotheses by talking with his mother, who had a small business at that time (Wiklund, 2017). Oldman and Hackman similarly described how consultants helped them develop their “Job Diagnostic Survey,” which in turn played an essential role in formulating job characteristics theory (Oldman & Hackman, 2005). Moreover, a distant search may uncover additional experts and evidence.

Overall, lean scholarship employs informants and distant literature to validate assumptions that serve as cornerstones of a potential research opportunity’s plausibility. We recognize the difficulty in validating such assumptions by talking to people about their experiences (particularly for researchers who only have deductive research experience using secondary data sources). Nevertheless, doing so can save scholars substantial time and effort later on. For instance, with the lean scholarship approach, a potential research opportunity’s flaws will eventually surface, so it is better to find them earlier in the research process than later to ensure fewer resources are invested. As a result, the focal researcher is in a better place to learn and then refine, pivot from, or terminate the opportunity. To test the assumptions underlying the early development of image theory, for instance, Beach and Mitchell (2005) conducted a decision-making experiment with planners from local power plants that required them to judge a series of scenarios at hypothetical sites. While the results of the experiment confirmed the authors’ theoretical predictions, afterward, they discovered the following:

One of the planners remarked that all this rigmarole was very nice, but it really did not reflect how site decisions were made. He claimed that planners simply screened out all sites that violated federal, state, or company guidelines and then selected the cheapest of the surviving sites. His colleagues agreed with him. By relying too much on our theory, we had built a magnificent, but wholly irrelevant decision system. We did not publish. On the other hand, we had learned something. . . . There is more than one way to make decisions. Indeed, after this little epiphany, it took only a little introspection to identify the various decision strategies we used ourselves. We decided to pursue this insight and construct a model that reflected it. (Beach & Mitchell, 2005: 40–41)

Finally, researchers can apply disciplined imagination to validate (or invalidate) assumptions either alone or with an audience. Disciplined imagination refers to constructing and selecting theoretical representations of a specific target subject, with the focal scholar serving as the source of both variation in and selection of these representations (Weick, 1989: 520). As abstract hypothetical scenarios, these thought trials serve as imaginary experiments for testing underlying assumptions and providing feedback to refine a potential research opportunity. For instance, Hamel (1996: 71) employed a thought experiment to test his assumption that disruptive strategies are ubiquitous across industries. In particular, he described how this assumption applies in the hotel industry:

Consider the hotel industry’s definition of a day, which begins when you check in and ends at noon when you check out. But if you check in at 1 A.M. after a grueling journey, why should you check out at the same time or pay the same amount as a person who arrived at 5 P.M. the previous afternoon? If a rental car company can manage a fleet of cars on a rotating 24-hour basis, why can’t a hotel do exactly the same with a fleet of rooms?

Based on this reasoning, Hamel argued that hotels apply a specific disruptive strategy, thereby challenging the ubiquitous nature of disruptive strategies. In a similar vein, Ouchi (1980) used a thought experiment to test the assumption that markets and hierarchical bureaucracies are the superior organizational forms across contexts. Specifically, this thought experiment was set in a hypothetical context characterized by goal incongruence between organizational members and demanding performance assessments, neither of which can be addressed well by markets or hierarchical bureaucracies. This thought experiment led to the question, “What if an organization was like a clan,” thus inspiring Ouchi to come up with a third form of organization (i.e., a clan) that is seemingly superior in this context.

We want to emphasize that lean scholarship entails sharing information with others early and often to learn; refining one’s potential research opportunity based on the feedback from sharing; and, ultimately, offering a high-quality, high-impact paper to the scholarly community. Interestingly, junior scholars are often hesitant to share information about their potential research opportunities because they worry others will steal them. As Barney (2005: 300) noted,

I think the most important thing I have learned over the last twenty-five years has had to do with the role of colleagues and friends in the intellectual process. I began my career by assuming that other professors were competitors. It was almost as if I had a “zero-sum” mentality about the publication process—if they publish a paper, I would not be able to publish a paper. This, of course, is nonsense. In fact, your colleagues can be your friends, and they can provide significant support…[and] these colleagues can be the source of new ideas and insights. I think that as I have shifted my perspective from one where I was competing with other professors to one where I was learning from my colleagues, the quality of my theoretical contributions has improved.

According to the lean scholarship perspective, not sharing one’s ideas with others is unproductive for numerous reasons: (1) When a potential research opportunity is not shared, it is unlikely to be refined in a way necessary for publication. (2) Without sharing a potential research opportunity (e.g., as a minimum viable paper), the opportunity is not likely to be as valuable because the focal scholar has fewer chances to learn and improve the opportunity/paper (and also improve as a scholar). (3) Lean scholarship is quick, so scholars who articulate and share their potential research opportunities are already well down the research path. An “idea thief,” on the other hand, is late to start the journey down the research path. Finally, (4) fear of this type of theft is perhaps more overblown than realized as most people pursue potential research opportunities that interest them personally. As such, the benefits of sharing ideas with others to (in)validate assumptions trump the potential costs of someone stealing those ideas.

6. Adding to the Portfolio of Papers

In lean scholarship, a scholar generates a portfolio of papers representing the exploitation of potential research opportunities at different stages of development (e.g., in data collection, in writing, under the first review at a journal, under advanced review at a journal, etc.) and in different research streams (e.g., entrepreneurial responses to adversity, venture emergence and growth, entrepreneurial decision-making and cognition). According to a real-options reasoning perspective, the scholar uses these papers to probe into the community of scholars to determine others’ reactions to these papers and thus learn about the feasibility of their potential opportunities. Based on this feedback, the scholar then terminates potential research opportunities that do not show promise and reallocates resources to those that do (for entrepreneurs using real-options reasoning, see McGrath, 1999; and for a portfolio of projects at different stages of development, see Bakker & Shepherd, 2017).

Despite the possible efficiency of generating and working on highly related papers (e.g., the same literature, the same method, the same intended audience, and so on), the lean scholarship framework requires scholars to have some heterogeneity across the papers in their portfolios. We are not implying that all potential research opportunities have to be radical and shrouded in uncertainty; rather, we are encouraging every researcher to have one or two radical research projects in their portfolios. Such heterogeneity decreases the downside of the uncertainty (of radical projects) in a portfolio, whereas the upside is increased because the “radical” potential research opportunities can provide insights to help develop the other papers in the portfolio and to generate additional potential opportunities for the overall choice set. A portfolio of potential research papers is dynamic due to the practices of terminating, pivoting, and adding potential research opportunities, which we describe in the next sections. The dynamic nature of a portfolio also means that while the choice of a potential research opportunity as one’s next project is significant, a large amount of resources will not necessarily be invested in this project to ensure it is finished. Rather, minimal resources are invested to learn more about the opportunity’s viability, and if needed, the project can be terminated or modified to form a new potential research opportunity.

Thus, lean scholarship entails generating a set of potential research opportunities to select one’s next project and manage one’s portfolio of potential research papers to probe the marketplace of ideas (Shepherd & Patzelt, 2022). For instance, when a paper is rejected by a journal, the author must consciously decide (most of the time) whether to continue pursuing this paper, terminate it (from the portfolio of papers) and reallocate the respective resources to other papers in the portfolio with more promise, or to pursue a new potential research opportunity (i.e., add another potential opportunity to the portfolio). As we discuss below, terminating a paper is not easy. However, doing so is a part of the research process that provides information about a paper’s promise (and about the underlying potential research opportunity) that could not initially be known and thus reveals whether it is better to invest more resources (mostly time and energy) in the paper (while trying to ignore the sunk costs) or reallocating those resources to more promising efforts.

7 : Deciding to Preserve , Pivot, or Terminate a Paper in the Portfolio

Have you ever heard a story about a paper being rejected from four journals, but the researcher persisted and eventually published a high-quality, high-impact version of the paper five years later? Not only have we heard this story, but we have lived this experience ourselves and told our own stories of success after extraordinary persistence. Nevertheless, such stories may ultimately do more harm than good because they convey the notion that “if I persist, I will succeed.” Scholars often fail to tell the stories about a paper being rejected from nine journals that were only put out of its misery after 10 years of trying and hundreds of hours of effort (to be candid, we also have some of these experiences, which means we do not always take a lean approach).

Costs of persistence. While the lean scholarship approach recognizes the potential benefits of persisting with a paper, it also acknowledges the costs of such persistence. In particular, persisting with a specific research project has an opportunity cost because the time and energy invested in persisting with the project could have been invested in another potential research opportunity with more promise. Even a researcher who eventually succeeds through persistence does not know what would have happened had that time and energy been invested elsewhere. For example, instead of persisting and publishing that single paper, perhaps the researcher could have used those resources to publish three papers and thus had a greater overall impact on the field. Therefore, in the lean scholarship approach, it is crucial to know when to terminate a paper because researchers likely tend to persist (e.g., through sunk costs and several other biases) or even escalate with a losing course of action (see Staw, 1981).

Terminating a paper. Due to the uncertainty surrounding research, deciding to terminate a paper is not an easy choice (because the scholar does not know if one final push is all that is needed to achieve success). However, “pulling the plug” on one paper seems easier when researchers have other projects to move on to (either in a portfolio of papers or from a set of potential research opportunities). Indeed, scholars have offered a wide range of opinions on whether papers should be terminated at times or whether every paper will eventually find a home (Connelly, 2020; Kellermanns, 2020). However, the steps of the lean scholarship approach help researchers terminate potential research opportunities with low promise and reallocate their resources to those with more promise. For example, with the entrepreneurial mindset toward a portfolio of papers required for lean scholarship, a researcher will terminate more (rather than fewer) papers because doing so earlier in the process (perhaps after initially presenting a minimum viable paper) allows the researcher to reallocate those resources to generate or purse other paper ideas. Moreover, the more scholars can terminate papers with low promise, the better they will become at doing so. As a consequence, the lean scholarship will hopefully result in more papers of both high quality and high impact. For instance, a recent editorial on “radical theorizing” in the Academy of Management Journal (Nadkarni et al., 2018: 376) proposed the following for developing a high-value portfolio of research projects:

There is value in taking stock on an annual basis and reflecting on the performance of our portfolio and its composition—dropping underperforming projects and making sure that we dedicate sufficient effort to more radical projects by saying “no” to new projects in the 70% share.

In a similar vein, the portfolio approach in lean scholarship means that researchers are working on multiple ongoing papers. Thus, terminating one paper simply means reallocating resources to a different ongoing project or selecting a new project from one’s set of potential research opportunities. This portfolio-of-papers approach aids researchers in managing the termination process, enabling them to recognize the value of a paper while also pushing them to ask, “Does this research project contribute to or detract from the effective management of my portfolio and pipeline of papers?” when deciding whether to persist with it. In other words, lean scholarship cuts out the deadwood. However, even terminating a paper likely facilitates learning that is valuable for researchers’ pursuit of other papers in their portfolios, for the generation and selection of their next research projects, and for their overall development as scholars. At worst, terminating a paper helps researchers learn what does not work, but more than likely, sometime in the future, they will end up drawing on some of the lessons they learned from terminating their projects. For instance, at one point, Dean Shepherd worked on a paper on time travel to make sense of the past and think about the future. Although he terminated this project many years back, he recently revisited its remains when he discovered other individuals considering different time frames to make meaning of their work in a qualitative study (Shepherd & Patzelt, 2022).

Pivoting to another potential research opportunity. Based on the notion of pivoting in the entrepreneurial context (Ries, 2011), we define a pivot in lean scholarship as a course correction entailing a significant change in the nature of a potential research opportunity. By pivoting, a scholar is acknowledging the limited value (or low probability of value creation) of a potential research opportunity and is switching to what appears to be a better course of action (but which is still shrouded in uncertainty). In turn, the scholar must develop a new minimum viable paper; (in)validate assumptions; and either refine, terminate, or pivot again. Whether a pivot continues a prior effort or turns to a new one is not as important as actually making a pivot when the chances of success are low and beginning the lean scholarship process anew.

When discussing creative endeavors, Grimes (2018) noted that actors form psychological ownership over their projects, making them more likely to persevere with a project (even when it represents a losing course of action) rather than pivot. The aspects of lean scholarship we discussed earlier can help with the pivoting aspect of lean scholarship. For instance, when a potential research opportunity shows low promise and is detrimental to the overall portfolio, the portfolio approach emphasizes the importance of pivoting away from (or terminating) this opportunity early for the good of the portfolio. However, lean scholarship can also include learning milestones as stage gates such that when these milestones are not met, researchers can focus away from persistence toward a pivot or termination. Alternatively, researchers can set decision points (i.e., based on time regardless of progress) in advance where they must choose to persist with a project or terminate/pivot. These decision points force researchers to consciously decide whether to persist rather than automatically persist due to inertia.

Scholars are likely to have more success with both learning milestones and persist/pivot decision points when they involve trusted colleagues because such colleagues can serve as a “community of inquiry” that improves the information available to inform pivoting decisions (for the role of communities of inquiry in the entrepreneurship context, see, e.g., Shepherd et al., 2020). Without this motivation for pivoting, the scholarship becomes less lean because researchers invest more resources in potential research opportunities with lower promise (so they make fewer investments in more promising papers in their portfolios), researchers’ portfolios become less dynamic as new potential research opportunities are overlooked, and researchers learn to ignore invalidating assumptions. From the lean scholarship perspective, a researcher who had to terminate three potential research opportunities and perform four pivots in the course of a year is more heroic than one who claims to have published a paper after seven years of trying.

Feedback Loops of Lean Scholarship

While we have described lean scholarship as a linear process thus far, it often tends to be more iterative and intertwined, as indicated by the dashed arrows in Fig. 6.1. Specifically, the task of generating a set of potential research opportunities and selecting one to pursue does not happen in a vacuum. Indeed, scholars may directly identify potential research opportunities from their own experiences with learning from a previous paper (i.e., from developing a minimum viable paper and [in]validating underlying assumptions) and with refining papers already in their portfolios. Therefore, when choosing what potential research opportunity to pursue next, a researcher needs to scrutinize each potential research opportunity vis-à-vis the others in their overall set and the papers in their portfolio. That is, the researcher should opt for the potential research opportunity that adds the most value to their overall portfolio. Specifically, as we mentioned, the decision to persist with one paper comes with the opportunity cost of not pursuing an entirely new potential research opportunity or not reallocating resources to other more promising papers in one’s portfolio. In contrast, when a researcher terminates a paper, resources are “freed up” for reallocation.

Although we have described the decision to pivot in terms of the alternatives of persisting and terminating, a pivot represents a new potential research opportunity and is thus part of the set of new potential research opportunities from which the focal researcher selects the “best” to pursue next.

What Is Lean Scholarship and What Is It Not

So far in this chapter, we have outlined a framework for lean scholarship. The purpose of this framework is to help researchers create multiple highly impactful papers with fewer resource (mostly time) costs. Our lean scholarship framework is based on the principles of developing an entrepreneurial mindset; generating a set of potential research opportunities from which to select one to pursue (to add to one’s portfolio of papers); creating minimum viable papers; validating assumptions; managing a portfolio of papers; and persisting with, pivoting from, or terminating specific papers. To further detail what lean scholarship does and does not involve, we offer a checklist in Table 6.1 and address anticipated concerns and misinterpretations about the lean scholarship framework in Table 6.2.

Table 6.1 Lean scholarship checklist
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Table 6.2 Responses to possible objections to lean scholarship
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Discussion

As the primary contribution of our work, we propose lean scholarship as a possible approach to help scholars generate a portfolio of multiple high-quality papers with (potentially) high impact. Due to the importance of publishing such papers for scholars’ career advancement and rankings (Wright et al., 2020), a prominent research stream has discussed criteria for evaluating the quality of individual papers and has thus provided guidance on how to improve this quality. One drawback of this literature, however, is that it portrays individual research projects as being independent of each other instead of embedded in a portfolio of (potential) projects. Such a portfolio perspective on scholars’ research is theoretically essential because promotion decisions and academic success generally hinge on multiple papers rather than one or a few (Adler & Harzing, 2009). Moreover, this perspective acknowledges that some papers in a portfolio may be related to and build off one another. Indeed, a research portfolio’s collective properties likely determine scholarly success (Connelly, 2020), but these properties may not be meaningful from a single-project perspective. Therefore, we argue that redirecting attention away from exploring how to generate individual high-quality papers to focusing on generating numerous high-quality, high-impact papers in a portfolio—as proposed by the lean scholarship approach—can considerably advance understanding of what leads to scholarly success.

Moreover, our theorizing on why some scholars are more likely to develop a lean scholarship mindset than others advances our understanding of the antecedents of scholarly success. Previous research on the antecedents of publication output has revealed numerous factors related to this success, including scholars’ social capital within the research community (Wright, 2020), their skills in addressing reviewer comments (Boyd, 2020), and their academic writing (Barney, 2018). Based on theorizing on the antecedents of a portfolio of high-quality, high-impact papers from an entrepreneurial practice perspective, we suggest that scholars’ cognitive adaptability is a possible factor aiding in the development of such a portfolio. Although scholars vary in their entrepreneurial mindset, those with high cognitive adaptability may prefer and may be more successful in pursuing the lean scholarship approach vis-à-vis an alternative approach to developing a portfolio of papers. Accordingly, future research on the antecedents of scholarly success could investigate researchers’ specific approaches to scholarship, such as developing a portfolio of numerous papers, and how this approach may vary depending on career stage (see McMullen & Shepherd, 2006; Podsakoff et al., 2018).

Finally, with our model of lean scholarship, we extend the application of the lean startup logic to theorizing on scholarship, particularly the development of a portfolio of high-quality, high-impact papers. Shepherd and Gruber (2021) recently suggested that the lean startup framework, which entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship educators use often, could serve as the starting point for generating novel theories about entrepreneurial phenomena, such as opportunity identification, business model development, entrepreneurial learning, communication, sensemaking, etc. In a similar vein, this chapter demonstrates how the lean startup logic can facilitate theorizing about phenomena more generally, and we hope it inspires future research on lean scholarship.

Applying Lean Scholarship

Lean scholarship and research teams. Scholars are beginning to build a strong understanding of the attributes of teams in relation to founding startups (Lazar et al., 2020; Patzelt et al., 2021), undertaking innovative projects (e.g., van Knippenberg, 2017), and taking on other creative efforts (e.g., Emich & Vincent, 2020). However, how many researchers have considered or consulted the literature on teams when picking a coauthor? Admittedly, we have not. Rather, our approach to picking a coauthor is to ask a simple question—“Would I have a drink (beer, coffee, tea, etc.) with this person?”—a criterion that we were unable to locate in the teams literature (but one that could serve as a proxy for many of partner attributes found in the literature). However, beyond these attributes of effective teams, lean scholarship has numerous implications for the nature of research teams. Namely, compared to researchers engaged in less lean scholarship, those who take the lean scholarship approach are likely to have more coauthors on a specific paper, be a member of more research teams, and form more diverse teams.

In particular, when more coauthors are included in each paper, a researcher can have more papers in their portfolio (assuming the coauthors do not free-load). In turn, having more papers in one’s portfolio provides more opportunities to learn across papers, to take on more papers that are risky/radical, to diversify across more research themes (e.g., four themes rather than two themes), and to more easily terminate potential research opportunities with low promise. In addition, being a member of more research teams opens up more opportunities to learn from other scholars, select the best-suited coauthors for a new potential research opportunity among one’s set of potential coauthors, and reduce dependence on any one specific coauthor (e.g., if one coauthor is unable to collaborate for a time, the researcher can still pursue and develop other papers in their portfolio with other coauthors). Having a larger number of coauthors on a research team and engaging with more research teams also enable researchers to benefit from a greater diversity of ideas and expertise to develop both their papers and their portfolios. For these aspects of team research to play out, however, scholars need to carefully choose whom they work with and have norms and practices for managing their research teams, including terminating dysfunctional coauthoring relationships.

Furthermore, how teams function in ongoing lean scholarship and how they are initially constructed with lean scholarship in mind are important aspects to consider. For example, a researcher who joins a new team may have to directly introduce lean scholarship norms and practices to other team members and reinforce these norms and practices as potential research opportunities unfold. Further, because lean scholarship includes terminating papers with low promise, this might also mean terminating associated coauthoring relationships. Regardless of a paper’s promise, however, lean scholarship requires all coauthors to carry their weight and endorse the lean scholarship approach. If they do not, a lean researcher will likely need to pivot away from such coauthors.

Lean scholarship and journals. An author can use a journal editor’s decision on a paper (based on reviewers’ recommendations) as a decision trigger, especially if the decision is to reject the paper. Based on the information provided in the decision letter, lean scholarship urges the focal researcher (or research team) to at least reflect on whether to persist, pivot, or terminate (based on their own portfolio of papers and set of potential research opportunities for the next project). While we do advise researchers to reflect and make this decision when they receive a decision letter, we do not necessarily mean they should do so the very same day when emotions could influence the decision. Indeed, a researcher could feel disappointed about an editor’s decision and quickly terminate the current potential research opportunity. Instead, the researcher should learn from the review and then either refine or successfully pivot the opportunity to benefit the paper. However, even when the decision is to terminate a potential research opportunity, we beseech researchers (including ourselves) not to squander the opportunity to learn—namely, to learn from the feedback (from the review) to enhance the lean scholarship process (e.g., “Why didn’t we pull the plug on this project earlier?”); to improve other papers in their portfolios; to generate and choose new potential research opportunities; and, ultimately, to keep learning how to become a better scholar (as we all can and should do).

Future Research on Lean Scholarship

Portfolio of papers. Due to the importance of a portfolio of papers in the lean scholarship approach, future research should study heterogeneity in scholars’ portfolio composition, the reasons they create different kinds of portfolios, and the effects of these various compositions. Furthermore, there is likely a point at which the size of a portfolio begins to constrain the research process and diminish the quality, impact, and quantity of research projects. Accordingly, future research could explore the ideal portfolio size and what moderates the relationship between portfolio size and success (e.g., the optimum portfolio of papers could be larger for researchers with more coauthors). Beyond size, future research can also investigate clusters of papers within portfolios and the “distance” between these clusters. In other words, research can capture the critical aspects of portfolio heterogeneity in the lean scholarship approach and the outcomes in terms of the quality, quantity, and impact of researchers’ published papers. At a finer-grained level, future research can explore the mechanisms underlying learning across papers within a portfolio, the decision to terminate potential research opportunities, and a portfolio’s dynamism as the focal researcher’s career advances.

Opportunity set. Future research can investigate how scholars generate and build a set of potential research opportunities, the characteristics of this set, and the criteria used to rank and choose opportunities. For instance, where do potential research opportunities come from—from observation, current research, distance literature search, etc.? Does the set capture different potential research opportunities or variations on the same theme? When does a researcher decide to add a potential research opportunity to their portfolio of papers that is more distant from the current research stream—for instance, a more radical opportunity? Thus, future research can study the attributes of opportunity sets as well as researchers’ learning and publication outcomes.

Triggers of lean scholarship. Given their understanding of the entrepreneurial mindset, perhaps entrepreneurship scholars are more likely to pursue lean scholarship. Moreover, we suspect (and hope future research examines) that the benefits of lean scholarship are amplified in contexts characterized by resource scarcity. That is, we expect the framework proposed in this chapter to be most effective for scholars who have few resources for research, high teaching loads (i.e., less time for research), and other responsibilities (e.g., service or family) that take time and energy away from their research efforts. Overall, there are many opportunities to investigate the personal and contextual antecedents of researchers’ decision to take the lean scholarship approach.

Minimum viable paper. In this chapter, we proposed many potential forms that a minimum viable paper could take. Although the “best” form is likely determined by the attributes of the focal scholar, potential research opportunity, and audience, we hope future research studies these important mechanisms for learning and enhancing research outcomes. Indeed, many papers have explored the effectiveness of business plans (e.g., Brinckmann et al., 2008; MacMillan & Narasimha, 1987) and startup pitches (e.g., Davis et al., 2017); however, we have a limited understanding of minimum viable papers as a key step in the timely development of multiple high-impact papers. For those who want to improve as scholars, future research needs to examine the various forms of minimum viable papers; their effectiveness; and moderators that capture the distinct attributes of the focal research, audience, topic, and so forth. Furthermore, we hope future research explores the role of minimum viable papers as boundary objects. For example, what characteristics of a minimum viable paper enhance its tangibility, shareability, and comprehensibility; spark more discussion across boundaries, and direct others’ attention toward the most important features of a potential research opportunity? Future research can dig deeper to investigate the boundaries that need be to cross, the audiences on the other side of those boundaries, and the different types of minimum viable papers that may be needed to cross different boundaries to access different audiences.

Validating assumptions. As discussed, one aspect of lean scholarship focuses on collecting evidence to (in)validate the fundamental assumptions underlying a potential research opportunity’s plausibility. Such investigations into assumption validity are different from tests of a model’s hypotheses. We hope future research studies how scholars decide which assumptions of a potential research opportunity need to be validated, how they validate/invalidate these assumptions, and how much evidence is needed to ultimately exploit a potential research opportunity. Moreover, how do scholars decide whether to investigate the most critical underlying assumption or a less critical assumption that requires fewer resources to investigate? Namely, we are interested in the strategies scholars use when taking the lean scholarship approach and the consequences of deciding to proceed vs. terminate. Indeed, some optimal combination of criticality and resources needed for testing likely exists.

In addition to learning about the (in)validity of the assumptions underlying a potential research opportunity for the timely development of a paper, researchers taking the lean scholarship approach are also likely to learn across papers. As such, does lean scholarship promote more learning among scholars over time than a non-lean scholarship? Of course, answering such a question requires measuring a learning outcome. Despite the considerable debate over measuring research, in this chapter, we focused on the quality, impact, and number of papers. If lean scholarship indeed promotes these outcomes, knowledge will advance more quickly, and lean scholars will be well-positioned for positive tenure decisions and subsequent promotions. Nevertheless, our claim that lean scholarship is superior in terms of delivering quality, impact, and quantity over other (non-lean and less lean) approaches is speculative. Thus, we hope future research examines the relationship between the scholarship’s leanness and various scholarship outcomes.

Pivoting from a potential research opportunity. Although entrepreneurship scholars likely recognize the importance of entrepreneurs, strategists, managers, and others pivoting, we contend that many scholars do not pivot themselves or are reluctant to do so. Future research can further our understanding of pivoting by investigating the following lines of inquiry. First, future research can explore whether and how researchers use ego-protective mechanisms to handle paper rejection and whether such mechanisms also obstruct pivoting from a potential research opportunity with low promise. However, some scholars may become desensitized to negative feedback (from experiencing many rejections over time; the most successful scholars are often those who have amassed the most rejections]) such that they no longer need to employ ego-protective mechanisms and are more willing to pivot when necessary. Thus, we hope future research addresses the following research questions: (1) do scholars use ego-protective mechanisms that can obstruct pivoting, (2) why are some scholars more willing or prepared to pivot than others, (3) do scholars become more likely to pivot over time, and (4) are scholars with fewer alternatives (a smaller portfolio of papers and fewer potential research opportunities as a next project) less likely to pivot (Shepherd & Patzelt, 2022)? We speculate that researchers who take the lean scholarship approach are more likely to pivot.

Second, Grimes (2018) explained how creators sometimes form psychological ownership over their creative outcomes. While this attachment is likely beneficial in some ways, it also likely delays pivoting. We understand (including from our own personal experience) how psychological ownership can facilitate the creative process of developing a potential research opportunity and exploiting it as a published paper, but how can scholars overcome psychological ownership when it becomes a barrier to pivoting? Can some scholars have their cake (psychological ownership) and eat it too (pivot when necessary)? Maybe psychological ownership can be “transferred” to a new potential research opportunity when a researcher pivots (e.g., the researcher thinking they would have never identified the new potential research opportunity had they not pursued the original opportunity).

Finally, although we speculate that many scholars are slow to pivot (with some being slower than others), we wonder if some scholars pivot too early. Indeed, there seem to be some researchers who initiate many projects but complete very few because they are drawn in by the next “big” thing. These scholars are not taking the lean approach because they are wasting resources. Thus, two critical questions regarding pivots arise (for entrepreneurs, managers, or researchers): when is the right time to stop persisting and pivot, and how can researchers quickly make this decision? We suggested that stage gates and scheduled persist-or-pivot decision points are likely useful in this regard. Future research can explore whether and how these tools are useful in timing a pivot and what other tools are available (or could be created) to aid scholars in deciding the “right” time to pivot.

Lean Scholarship Beyond Research. While this chapter focuses on publications, entrepreneurship scholars do more than research as part of their jobs. Thus, we hope future research extends the lean scholarship logic to other aspects of scholarly work, including teaching, service, administration, and more. For example, we highlight the possibility of lean administration. Is it an oxymoron, or can some scholars make it a reality?

Conclusion

Inspired by the lean startup approach, which is widely recognized and extensively applied in both entrepreneurial practice and education, we present lean scholarship as a possible approach to developing a portfolio of numerous high-quality, high-impact papers. We acknowledge that scholars will likely vary in how useful they find this framework for their research, we also contend that scholars with an entrepreneurial mindset can follow the systematic approach presented herein to generate a set of potential research opportunities; develop minimum viable papers; (in)validate the assumptions underlying potential research projects; and manage a portfolio of papers by periodically deciding whether to persist with, pivot from, or terminate the projects in the portfolio. We also hope future research can empirically demonstrate the usefulness of this approach and identify the conditions under which it is most successful.