Entrepreneurship and metaphysics

While ontology has been recognized as a contributing factor to theoretical disagreements in entrepreneurship, there has been a notable lack of effort to draw out and explicitly discuss the relationships between entrepreneurship and metaphysics. Drawing from Aristotle, we articulate metaphysics as a first philosophy – an ongoing theoretical engagement with the ultimate structure of reality – that supports and guides diverse ways of pursuing knowledge in entrepreneurship. We punctuate uniqueness and universality as two metaphysical pillars in entrepreneurial theory and conclude our perspective paper by discussing how better appreciation and understanding of ontological questions might improve entrepreneurship theory and practice.