Sarah Graham Kenan Scholar and Assistant Professor of Operations, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School
Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Training Director, Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Fred Kayne (1960) Career Development Professor of Entrepreneurship and Assistant Professor of Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management, MIT Sloan School of Management and 2022 Kenan Institute Distinguished Fellow
Professor in Psychology and Neuroscience; Adjunct Professor in Organizational Behavior, Kenan-Flagler Business School
Examining the strategy formation process is central to understanding why some firms in entrepreneurial settings create competitive advantage and succeed while others do not. While existing work shows the value of learning from experience or having a holistic understanding of how the pieces fit together, there is limited empirical research that fuses the two streams. We first review the extant literature on strategy formation in entrepreneurial settings by organizing around this fundamental tension between strategizing by “doing” versus “thinking.” We then describe recent work that blends the two and conclude with a future research agenda.