11–20 of 89 posts
Ouch. But it also seems that the quality of research is falling? I guess it's cause I come from a technical field but a paper with a bunch of text, citations, and a general concept can be called research in the business field? Is it any wonder there is so much bs out there?
It's weird to see stuff like this published as a "paper", as if it were a scientific endeavour, when there doesn't seem to be any experiment, mathematics, or even data involved. Just a lot of conjecture sprinkled with citations. It seems like the epitome of Feynman's cargo cult science. I'm actually very sympathetic with the idea being advanced, I'm just not sure what really separates this and a blog post.
Historians write papers. As do philosophers and classicists. There are papers in literary criticism, law, music theory, and theology, and none of them have experiments, mathematics, or data (at least in the scientific sense of the word). I don't think that makes those endeavors invalid. The difference between an academic paper and a blog post is that an academic paper needs to fit into the context of the academic lit…
Truly a miracle it is to witness the birth of new jargon. For academics working on understanding things like societal/economic dynamics, perhaps take a moment to consider that for the work to have any real impact, it needs to be understood by laypeople? Biologists can get away with naming things all sort of nonsense because the everyday person doesnt interact with it, but if you're trying to highlight destructive dyn…
Someone writing Medium blogs about startups probably expects the target audience to have at least a passing familiarity with what comparing an approach to Steve Blank might imply, and academic business schools referencing Veblen aren't very different.
Truly a miracle it is to witness the birth of new jargon. For academics working on understanding things like societal/economic dynamics, perhaps take a moment to consider that for the work to have any real impact, it needs to be understood by laypeople? Biologists can get away with naming things all sort of nonsense because the everyday person doesnt interact with it, but if you're trying to highlight destructive dyn…
It's weird to see stuff like this published as a "paper", as if it were a scientific endeavour, when there doesn't seem to be any experiment, mathematics, or even data involved. Just a lot of conjecture sprinkled with citations. It seems like the epitome of Feynman's cargo cult science. I'm actually very sympathetic with the idea being advanced, I'm just not sure what really separates this and a blog post.
It's weird to see stuff like this published as a "paper", as if it were a scientific endeavour, when there doesn't seem to be any experiment, mathematics, or even data involved. Just a lot of conjecture sprinkled with citations. It seems like the epitome of Feynman's cargo cult science. I'm actually very sympathetic with the idea being advanced, I'm just not sure what really separates this and a blog post.
Truly a miracle it is to witness the birth of new jargon. For academics working on understanding things like societal/economic dynamics, perhaps take a moment to consider that for the work to have any real impact, it needs to be understood by laypeople? Biologists can get away with naming things all sort of nonsense because the everyday person doesnt interact with it, but if you're trying to highlight destructive dyn…
I know a little bit about economics and social science, and for me the phrase "Veblenian Entrepreneur" was immediately meaningful and helpful. It gives me a theoretical frame for understanding a whole constellation of behaviors I've personally observed, and the incentives that drive them.
What I think this paper contributes is the idea of the entrepreneurial industry itself; that the low quality of ventures isn't a bug, but a feature. It's an integrated system to provide necessarily expensive social and signalling needs.
Some famous investors have questioned universities for the same reasons. The irony is that it might also be happening to technology ventures too.
Truly a miracle it is to witness the birth of new jargon. For academics working on understanding things like societal/economic dynamics, perhaps take a moment to consider that for the work to have any real impact, it needs to be understood by laypeople? Biologists can get away with naming things all sort of nonsense because the everyday person doesnt interact with it, but if you're trying to highlight destructive dyn…
As a more direct example staying with the theme of computer science but using English communication, in the context of programming I can can use the term isomorphism and the subset of people I'm communicating to (or expecting to) will know what it means, or after looking it up likely quickly understand what I'm communicating. For a novice or non-programmer, that may be significantly less likely. Am I better off replacing the term isomorphism with "running the same code on the client and server" all over the place? It depends on my audience and goals.
So, what's the purpose of this paper? To be widely distributed to the general public, or to be spread between business and economics academics for further research and discussion? I suspect writing your academic papers to the lowest common denominator is a good way to get your ideas dismissed by peers, as it both takes them longer to wade through the extra (unnecessary, for them) words which are also less clear, as an oft-used community term will carry more meaning than is easily expressed by the words you can replace it with in usage in a sentence.
Ouch. But it also seems that the quality of research is falling? I guess it's cause I come from a technical field but a paper with a bunch of text, citations, and a general concept can be called research in the business field? Is it any wonder there is so much bs out there?
As for research as a whole it would require a metanalysis of a lot of papers over the year. It is possible it was always distributed about the same, or there were other filtering effects like stinkers didn't propagate as far in the past with higher publishing costs so we can't tell for sure.
Snark aside it is more like a clickbait article in making assertions and failing to either provide qualatative justifications or properly constrain them to the subset actually examined. Most businesses fail and dissolve in their first year period. A qualatative study that looked at numbers of "great outliers" may be more permissible but one which tries to make broad claims.
It isn't even consistent with the definitions, and axiomatically assumes low quality and waste for veblen goods. There have long been whole markets out there for high status "green" or "socially conscious" goods that cost more than the commodity as effective status signaling as an effect (whether it is primary or secondary depends on the individuals involved and their sincerity and consistency of action).
Low quality is also poorly defined. They imply cheap goods upsold but that doesn't make it poor enterpenuariship - going bankrupt in an easily preventable way and failing would be though.
It appears to be yet another tedious academic political axe grinder.