We discuss the impediments to theorizing about entrepreneurial activity, why these exist, and what to do about them. We do so because we believe that the evolution of theory in entrepreneurship has been frustratingly slow. We approach the relevant issues from an appropriate but narrow perspective—through the analysis of two pairs of recent articles published in the generalist top theory outlet—the Academy of Management Review. We consider these as exemplars of high-quality, high-visibility, likely-to-be-highly-cited, and new entrepreneurship theorizing. All four articles focus on original partial theory-building in the entrepreneurial process. These articles address different challenges facing different individual entrepreneurs, with many similarities in approach. However, each work argues its new propositions or insights from a non-entrepreneurial reference theory, which may well be one of the sacrifices that must be made to get published in top mainstream journals. We focus on the similarities of these articles to argue our points about why theorizing in our field is unlikely to improve in the near future and to identify the main impediments to such improvements. We explore the negative implications for our field’s future, and then we suggest five bold steps to better the prognostication.

我们讨论了企业家活动理论化的障碍，原因为何存在以及如何处理。我们之所以这样做，是因为我们认为，创业理论的发展令人沮丧地缓慢。我们从适当但狭perspective的角度处理相关问题，方法是对通才顶尖理论刊物上发表的两对最新文章进行分析，即管理评论学院。我们认为这些是高质量，高可见度，可能被高度引用以及新企业家理论的典范。所有这四篇文章都侧重于创业过程中原始的部分理论构建。这些文章针对不同个体企业家面临的不同挑战，在方法上有许多相似之处。但是，每部作品都从非企业家参考理论论证了自己的新主张或新见解，这很可能是为了在顶级主流期刊上发表而做出的牺牲之一。我们专注于这些文章的相似性，以就我们的理论为何在不久的将来不太可能改进的观点争论不休，并找出阻碍此类改进的主要障碍。我们探索对我们领域未来的负面影响，