At the centenary of Frank H. Knight’s Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit (1921), we explore the continuing relevance of Knightian uncertainty to the theory and practice of entrepreneurship. There are three challenges facing such assessment. First, RUP is complex and difficult to interpret. The key but neglected element of RUP is that Knight’s account is not solely about risk and uncertainty as states of nature, but about how an agent’s beliefs about uncertain outcomes and confidence in those beliefs guide their choices. Second, RUP is Knight’s only effort in this area. His subsequent career led elsewhere, so he did not engage with subsequent interpretations of this work. Third, much of the current literature emphasizes that decisions must be different under the two states of nature with a consequent misunderstanding of entrepreneurial agency. This paper addresses each challenge in sequence. First, we explicate Knight’s (1921) approach and explain why that approach is murky. Second, as a complement to Knight’s interpretation, we examine Frank P. Ramsey’s approach to subjective probabilities to help clarify Knight’s murky approach. What links Knight and Ramsey is a shared pragmatism about entrepreneurial agency under uncertainty that depends upon the beliefs about, and confidence in, their judgments of possible outcomes. This Knight-Ramsey approach does not require actor’s behaviors to be determined by the class of uncertain environment (whether risk, uncertainty, or ambiguity) they face. We focus on the response by the entrepreneur to the existence of uncertainty in all its forms. We argue that this reductive account provides a foundation to examine common problems in management, including managerial hubris, the interaction between entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, and the need for experimentation (such as prototyping and market research) in advance of new product and venture launches. Third, we critique current literature that favors epistemic purism about the ontology of risk and uncertainty and ignores Knight-Ramsey pragmatism in meeting uncertainty, such as using formal and informal institutions for uncertainty mitigation. Our account locates Frank Knight’s subtleties in entrepreneurial behavior firmly in the literature on entrepreneurial agency a century later.

在 Frank H. Knight 的风险、不确定性和利润(1921)一百周年之际，我们探讨了 Knight 不确定性与创业理论和实践的持续相关性。这种评估面临三个挑战。首先，RUP很复杂且难以解释。RUP的关键但被忽视的元素是 Knight 的描述不仅是关于作为自然状态的风险和不确定性，而且是关于代理对不确定结果的信念和对这些信念的信心如何指导他们的选择。二、RUP是奈特在这方面的唯一努力。他随后的职业生涯在别处进行，因此他没有参与对这部作品的后续解释。第三，当前的许多文献都强调，在两种自然状态下，决策必须不同，从而导致对创业能动性的误解。本文按顺序解决了每个挑战。首先，我们解释 Knight (1921) 的方法并解释为什么这种方法是模糊的。其次，作为对 Knight 解释的补充，我们检查 Frank P. Ramsey 的主观概率方法，以帮助澄清 Knight 的模糊方法。将奈特和拉姆齐联系在一起的是关于不确定性下的创业代理的共同实用主义，这取决于他们对可能结果的判断的信念和信心。这种 Knight-Ramsey 方法不要求演员的行为由他们面临的不确定环境类别（无论是风险、不确定性还是模糊性）决定。我们关注企业家对各种形式的不确定性存在的反应。我们认为，这种简化说明为检查管理中的常见问题提供了基础，包括管理狂妄自大、企业家和风险投资家之间的互动，以及在新产品和风险发布之前进行实验（如原型设计和市场研究）的必要性。第三，我们批评当前支持关于风险和不确定性本体的认知纯粹主义的文献，而忽略了奈特-拉姆齐在应对不确定性方面的实用主义，例如使用正式和非正式机构来缓解不确定性。