Economic Opportunity and Evolution: Beyond Landscapes and Bounded Rationality

Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Forthcoming

35 Pages Posted: 8 Jan 2013 Last revised: 23 Apr 2014

See all articles by Teppo Felin

Teppo Felin

University of Oxford - Said Business School; Utah State University - Huntsman School of Business

Stuart Kauffman

Institute for Systems Biology

Roger Koppl

Whitman School of Management; Whitman School of Management

Giuseppe Longo

CNRS - Ecole Normale Superieure; Biology

Date Written: January 7, 2013

Abstract

The nature of economic opportunity has recently received significant attention in entrepreneurship, organization science and strategy. The notion of boundedly rational search on an (NK) opportunity landscape has been particularly relevant to these conversations and debates. We argue that the focus on bounded rationality and search is highly problematic for the fields of entrepreneurship and strategy and does not allow us to explain the origins of economic novelty. We contrast the NP problem with the frame problem to illustrate our point, and highlight the role of adjacent possibilities and novel affordances. We discuss the entrepreneurial and economic implications of these arguments by building on unique insights from biology, the natural and computational sciences.

Keywords: entrepreneurship, organization science, econonomic opportunity, phase space, NK landscapes, complexity theory, biology, evolutionary theory

JEL Classification: C63, D8, D83, L1, L2, P00, B25

Suggested Citation

Felin, Teppo and Kauffman, Stuart and Koppl, Roger and Koppl, Roger and Longo, Giuseppe, Economic Opportunity and Evolution: Beyond Landscapes and Bounded Rationality (January 7, 2013). Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2197512 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2197512

Teppo Felin (Contact Author)

University of Oxford - Said Business School ( email )

Park End Street
Oxford, OX1 1HP
Great Britain

HOME PAGE: http://sites.google.com/site/teppofelin2/

Utah State University - Huntsman School of Business ( email )

3500 Old Main Hill
Logan, UT 84322-3500
United States

Stuart Kauffman

Institute for Systems Biology ( email )

401 Terry Ave N.
Seattle, WA 98109
United States

Roger Koppl

Whitman School of Management ( email )

721 University Avenue
Syracuse, NY 13244-2130
United States
(315) 443-4543 (Phone)
(315) 442-1449 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://whitman.syr.edu/faculty-and-research/faculty/showInfo.aspx?id=468

Whitman School of Management ( email )

United States
(315) 443-4543 (Phone)
(315) 442-1449 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://whitman.syr.edu/faculty-and-research/faculty/showInfo.aspx?id=468

Giuseppe Longo

CNRS - Ecole Normale Superieure ( email )

Centre Cavaillès
29, rue d'Ulm
Paris, 75005
France

HOME PAGE: http://www.di.ens.fr/users/longo/

Biology ( email )

Boston, MA
United States

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