Literature Positioning (jbv-literature-positioning)

When to trigger

• Your introduction reads as "X is understudied in entrepreneurship" (gap-spotting)
• Reviewers say you "ignore the canonical entrepreneurship conversation"
• You cite only one discipline when the phenomenon spans several
• You are unsure which scholarly conversation your paper actually joins

Join a conversation, do not spot a gap

At an FT50 entrepreneurship flagship, "no one has studied this" is a weak motivation. Instead:

• Problematize: surface and challenge an assumption the entrepreneurship field takes for granted (e.g., that opportunities are discovered vs. created, that VC signals quality, that more resources always help nascent ventures). Problematization beats gap-filling.
• Name the conversation: state precisely which entrepreneurship debate you enter — opportunity discovery vs. creation, effectuation vs. causation, the role of failure and learning, financing signals, ecosystem effects — and what you add or overturn.
• Engage multidisciplinarily: JBV is grounded in economics, psychology, and sociology. If your phenomenon spans lenses, cite across them; positioning only within one discipline when the puzzle is broader reads as thin to an editor who routes across domains.

Map the landscape before claiming novelty

• Distinguish the entrepreneurship literature from the general management/strategy literature your work touches. JBV cares that the conversation is about the entrepreneurial phenomenon.
• Cite the foundational and the most recent JBV / entrepreneurship work on your topic; show you are current, not re-deriving settled results.
• Identify the closest two or three papers and articulate the delta — what they assumed or were unable to see that you now show.

Field-editor routing implication

Because manuscripts route through a domain-specific area-editor structure, your positioning signals which domain should handle the paper. Make the home conversation unmistakable in the first two pages so the paper routes to a sympathetic, expert editor and reviewers.

Checklist

• Motivation is problematization, not "understudied"
• The specific entrepreneurship conversation is named
• Multidisciplinary engagement where the phenomenon warrants it
• Closest 2-3 papers identified with an explicit delta
• Entrepreneurship literature distinguished from adjacent general-management work
• Positioning makes the area-editor domain obvious

Anti-patterns

• Gap-spotting as the sole hook.
• Citation dumping — long undifferentiated reference lists with no conversation.
• Single-silo positioning when the phenomenon is multidisciplinary.
• Straw-manning the discovery/creation or effectuation debates to manufacture novelty.

Worked micro-example: problematize, do not gap-spot (illustrative)

A study of equity crowdfunding has a draft intro that opens "equity crowdfunding is understudied." Reframing:

• Name the conversation: it joins the financing-signals debate — does the crowd read founder signals the way professional VCs do, or differently?
• Problematize an assumption: the field assumes funding signals are universally interpreted; the paper challenges that by showing non-professional backers weight passion cues over the credentials VCs prize.
• Closest-papers delta: prior VC-signaling work assumed expert evaluators; this manuscript shows the inference shifts when evaluators are a dispersed crowd — the delta is the evaluator, not the signal.
• Field-editor signal: positioning in entrepreneurial-finance plus cognition makes the home domain (and routing) unmistakable on page one.

Positioning pass for Journal of Business Venturing

Treat this skill as an executable review pass, not a prose hint. First lock the entrepreneurial mechanism, level of analysis, evidence design, and boundary conditions for ventures; then judge whether the current manuscript answers the venue's real reader: entrepreneurship reviewers who ask whether the paper advances venture formation, opportunity, founder, or ecosystem theory.

• Do the pass: Build a three-column map: incumbent conversation, unresolved tension, and this manuscript's delta; include one sibling-venue omission that would make a referee doubt the fit.
• Return a ledger: give claim / evidence / risk / manuscript location rows, so the next agent can edit rather than rediscover the issue.
• Sibling guard: compare against Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice for broader entrepreneurship, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal for strategy interface, AMJ for general management; if a sibling owns the contribution, recommend re-routing before polishing format.
• Stop condition: do not give submission-ready advice until the pack's resources/official-source-map.md has been checked for volatile rules and the manuscript has one concrete fix for the largest venue-specific risk.

Output format

【Conversation joined】the entrepreneurship debate, named ...
【Assumption problematized】...
【Disciplines engaged】econ / psych / sociology ...
【Closest papers + delta】[A] assumed ...; we show ...
【Field-editor signal】home domain for routing ...
【Next step】jbv-methods or jbv-contribution-framing