In Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (RUP), Knight (1921) develops a theory of the firm that stresses the important role of entrepreneurial judgment for a firm's success. For Knight, entrepreneurial judgment is first and foremost the selection of ‘proxy entrepreneurs’ who are capable of making good judgments under uncertainty. In this sense, entrepreneurial judgment is essentially ‘judgment of judgment’. An overlooked implication of Knight's position is the fact that it leads to an endorsement of distributed entrepreneurship and responsibility. We deem this a very modern idea that challenges a completely hierarchical understanding of the firm. Knight himself does not thoroughly examine the institutional implications of the analytical framework he sets up in RUP. In this paper, we summarize the ‘philosophical vision’ of Knight's framework and illustrate his rationale behind the distribution of entrepreneurship. We conclude the paper with a discussion of potential institutional implications by referring to the danger of monocultures, the additional value created by cognitively diverse teams, and the effectiveness of venture capitalists.

中文翻译：

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弗兰克奈特和创业的认知多样性

在风险、不确定性和利润(RUP), Knight (1921) 发展了一种公司理论，强调企业家判断对公司成功的重要作用。对于奈特来说，企业家判断首先是选择能够在不确定性下做出良好判断的“代理企业家”。从这个意义上说，企业家判断本质上是“判断的判断”。奈特立场的一个被忽视的含义是，它导致了对分布式企业家精神和责任的认可。我们认为这是一个非常现代的想法，它挑战了对公司的完全等级化的理解。Knight 本人并没有彻底检查他在 RUP 中建立的分析框架的制度含义。在本文中，我们总结了奈特的“哲学视野” 的框架，并说明他在企业家精神分布背后的基本原理。我们以讨论潜在的制度影响来结束本文，并提到了单一文化, 创造的附加价值认知多样化的团队, 和有效性风险资本家.