151consider whether resources are better spent on primary school teachers.

5.2

Problems of Discrimination and the Need

for Evidence-Based Advice

Entrepreneurs are entirely dependent on outsiders’ help to realize their ideas and need to be perceived as legitimate in the eyes of external stakeholders (Stinchcombe, 2000). In a field in which formal signs of legitimacy are few—new ventures typically do not have a strong brand, obvious assets, or preexisting track record—adhering to cultural ideals increase the legitimacy of the entrepreneur. For entrepreneurs themselves, understanding and playing along with the cultural ideals can be a strong asset (Aldrich & Fiol, 1994; Zott & Huy, 2007). For example, Zott and Huy (2007) demonstrated in a field study how British entrepreneurs engage in various symbolic actions to be perceived as more legitimate.

For entrepreneurs who fall outside of the norm, however, cultural ideals lead to problems of discrimination. This is also something that has been highlighted in prior research, in which scholars have shown that entrepreneurs that do not fit with gender stereotypes (Ahl & Marlow, 2012; Kanze et al., 2018), demographic stereotypes (Blanchflower et al., 2003), or who do not adhere to an accepted communication style (Gino et al., 2020) are less likely to receive external support. Insights presented here, however, show that it is not only individuals that become subject to A. Brattström

152discrimination. In addition, informants testified to mundane ideas being discriminated against in favor of those that fits with a sexy-and-hot ideal; as well as of slow-paced, reflective thinking being discriminated against in favor of fast-paced, action-based approaches. Ultimately, this leads to a reductionist approach to entrepreneurship, whereby actors in the industry seek to follow what is assumed to be the one best practice. This is problematic because entrepreneurship research has consistently demonstrated that there is not one best practice available. For example, that there is not one unifying personality trait that characterizes successful entrepreneurs (Kerr et al., 2019; Rauch & Frese, 2007), but they come with different cognitive abilities (Levine & Rubinstein, 2017) and different degrees of action-orientation (Yu et al., 2021). Contrary to the reductionist perspective, entrepreneurship is a process of equifinality, meaning that different starting points and different means can lead to similar outcomes. To better understand this process, theory that advances a mechanism-based approach (Kim et al., 2016) or design principles to entrepreneurship (Berglund et al., 2018) could be a useful starting point. In all, it would be useful to establish a more evidence-based approach in the entrepreneurship industry. In particular, it is noteworthy that many of the researchers