ETP reviewers are entrepreneurship specialists who know the canon. Generic gap-spotting ("little research has examined X") reads as a desk-reject signal. Instead, name the conversation and your move within it: are you extending discovery-vs-creation, contrasting effectuation with causation, advancing socioemotional-wealth theory in family firms, reconciling competing accounts of entrepreneurial persistence? State whose claims you build on, whose you qualify, and whose you overturn. The standard is "we change what entrepreneurship scholars believe about Z," not "we add a moderator."
| Move | What it claims | What it must show | ETP risk if weak |
|---|---|---|---|
| Extend | Pushes a known mechanism into new conditions | The extension is non-obvious and the boundary is informative | "Incremental" |
| Qualify | A known effect holds only under entrepreneurial conditions | A scope condition that prior work missed | "We already knew this" |
| Reconcile | Two competing accounts both hold, conditionally | The contingency that resolves the conflict | "Just splits the difference" |
| Overturn | A received belief is wrong in the entrepreneurial setting | Strong evidence and a replacement mechanism | "Overclaimed" |
Pick the strongest move your evidence supports — and only that move. ETP punishes a paper that promises to overturn but delivers an extension.
| Sibling | Their center of gravity | Your ETP defense |
|---|---|---|
| JBV | Broad, multidisciplinary, narrative-tolerant venturing | "We build tight theory with a practice implication, ETP's dual mandate" |
| SEJ | Strategy of entrepreneurial firms; advantage, scaling | "Our contribution is entrepreneurship theory, not competitive strategy" |
| AMJ | General management theory | "Entrepreneurship is the theory here, not just the setting" |
| Research Policy | Innovation systems, R&D, policy | "Our unit is founders/ventures, not the innovation system" |
If a sibling genuinely owns your contribution, recommend rerouting before polishing — a misplaced paper is a slow desk-reject.
A family-business paper opens: "Although family firms are common, little research examines how they innovate." A specialist ETP reviewer reads this as gap-spotting and an outsider tell — the socioemotional wealth (SEW) literature has examined exactly this for years. The repositioning names the conversation and a move: the SEW account predicts family firms under-invest in risky innovation to protect non-financial endowments, yet recent evidence is mixed. The paper's move is reconcile — it shows the SEW innovation-aversion holds when family control is threatened but reverses when innovation is framed as preserving the firm for the next generation (transgenerational intent as the contingency). Now the contribution is field-level ("we resolve when SEW suppresses vs. spurs innovation"), it engages ETP's family-business franchise directly, and the sibling defense is clean: this is entrepreneurship/family-firm theory (ETP), not a competitive-strategy story (SEJ) or a generic innovation-management study (AMJ). Critically, the move is "reconcile," matched to evidence — not an inflated "overturn."
【Journal】Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice
【Conversation】<named debate + key cites>
【Positioning move】extend / qualify / reconcile / overturn
【What changes if we're right】one field-level sentence
【Core lit engaged】entrepreneurship canon + ETP franchise (family/social/finance)
【Sibling defense】ETP > JBV/SEJ/AMJ because ...
【Verdict】positioned / sharpen / reroute to <venue>
【Next skill】etp-methods