A Scientific Approach to Entrepreneurial Decision Making: Large Scale Replication and Extension

This large-scale replication of Camuffo et al. (2020) - 759 firms in 4 randomized control trials - confirms that a scientific approach to entrepreneurial decisions can be taught and leads to superior results. The paper yields novel contributions. First, the adoption of a scientific approach generates fewer pivots, which is associated with higher performance. Second, it develops a theoretical framework that sheds light on the underlying mechanisms: methodic doubt (greater caution) and efficient search (better information). We show that fewer pivots imply that, in our sample, the former mechanism dominates. Third, results are robust to the use of a measure of the adoption of the scientific approach instrumented by the treatment, and to models that account for the joint determination of variables.