Topic Selection (etp-topic-selection)

When to trigger

• You have a result or a dataset but the question it answers is not obviously about entrepreneurship
• You are unsure whether ETP, JBV, SEJ, or AMJ is the right outlet for this question
• A coauthor asks "is this an ETP paper or a generic management/strategy paper?"
• The phenomenon is interesting but you cannot say which entrepreneurship conversation it joins

What makes a question an ETP question

ETP is the theory-and-practice flagship of entrepreneurship (SAGE for Baylor; official journal of USASBE). A topic clears the ETP bar when it is about the distinctively entrepreneurial — the creation of new economic activity under uncertainty — and it promises to move a theory conversation while saying something a practitioner (founder, investor, family-firm owner, policymaker, educator) could act on. ETP's historical roots in small business and its USASBE affiliation mean it takes practice seriously; its current identity is high-theory. A good ETP topic lives at that intersection.

Entrepreneurship-central phenomena ETP publishes: new-venture creation and the opportunity process (recognition/discovery vs. creation), effectuation and entrepreneurial decision logic, bricolage and resourcefulness under constraint, entrepreneurial identity and cognition, family business (a core ETP franchise), social and sustainable entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial finance (VC, angels, crowdfunding), ecosystems, and entrepreneurship education. If your question does not touch one of these, it is probably a management/strategy/finance question wearing a startup costume.

A three-test filter before you commit

1. The substitution test. Swap "new venture / founder" for "established firm / manager" in your research question. If the question still makes complete sense, it is not yet entrepreneurship — find the primitive (novelty, Knightian uncertainty, liability of newness, resource constraint, founder centrality) that breaks under substitution.
2. The conversation test. Name the specific ETP conversation you join (e.g., the discovery-vs-creation debate; the effectuation–causation contrast; socioemotional wealth in family firms). "The entrepreneurship literature" is not a conversation.
3. The practice test. Say in one sentence what a founder, investor, or policymaker would do differently if you are right. If the only answer is "scholars should cite a new moderator," ETP is the wrong claim shape.

Choosing ETP over its siblings

Where ETP-fit questions tend to come from

Strong ETP topics rarely start from a method or a dataset; they start from a puzzle in entrepreneurial reality. Productive sources to mine before committing:

• Anomalies in founder behavior — founders doing what standard theory says they should not (betting on affordable loss, persisting after failure, giving up control to keep a family firm intact). The anomaly is the seed of a mechanism.
• A practice debate without theory — something founders, investors, or accelerators argue about (does an early CFO signal quality? do failed founders deserve a second bet?) that the literature has not adjudicated.
• A construct that traveled poorly — a management/psychology idea imported into entrepreneurship without a venture boundary, ripe for re-theorizing with a scope condition.
• An ETP franchise with a live tension — family business (SEW vs. innovation), social/sustainable entrepreneurship (mission vs. survival), entrepreneurial finance (signaling vs. screening) — where ETP has depth and an unresolved contingency.

A topic sourced this way usually clears the substitution and conversation tests by construction, because it begins from the entrepreneurial primitive rather than retrofitting one.

Checklist

• The question survives the substitution test (breaks when "founder/new venture" is removed)
• A named ETP conversation is the target, not "the literature"
• A one-sentence practice implication exists and is non-trivial
• The phenomenon is one ETP actually publishes (opportunity, family business, effectuation, social/sustainable, finance, ecosystems, education)
• ETP beats JBV/SEJ/AMJ for this question, and you can say why
• The contribution is theory-forward, not a dataset-forward "we have new data on startups"

Anti-patterns

• Setting-not-theory: a startup sample standing in for an entrepreneurial mechanism
• Conversation-less: positioning against "the entrepreneurship literature" with no specific debate
• Practice as decoration: a paper with no actionable implication, hoping the USASBE heritage forgives it
• Outlet drift: a strategy or finance paper sent to ETP because a coauthor likes the impact factor
• Trend-chasing: a topic chosen because "AI startups / crowdfunding" is hot, with no entrepreneurial mechanism

Worked vignette (illustrative)

A team has Crunchbase data showing that startups with a CFO hire earlier raise larger Series A rounds. As stated, this is a corporate-finance result — apply the substitution test: "firms with a CFO raise more capital" is true of established firms too, so the question is not yet entrepreneurial. The fix is to find the venture primitive: reframe around legitimacy under the liability of newness — an early CFO is a costly signal that a young, unproven venture is investment-ready, and the conversation becomes signaling/legitimacy in entrepreneurial finance (not generic capital structure). Now the substitution breaks (a 30-year-old firm needs no such legitimacy signal), the named conversation is concrete, and the practice implication is sharp: founders facing investor skepticism can use a senior-finance hire as a legitimacy signal, but only before the liability of newness fades. The same data, re-questioned, becomes an ETP paper.

Output format

【Journal】Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice
【Question (one sentence)】...
【Substitution test】breaks because: <entrepreneurial primitive> / FAILS (reroute)
【Named conversation】<specific debate, e.g. discovery vs. creation>
【Practice implication】what a founder/investor/policymaker does differently
【Outlet check】ETP > JBV/SEJ/AMJ because ...
【Verdict】proceed / sharpen / reroute to <venue>
【Next skill】etp-theory-development