This chapter offers a discovery-assembly-viability (DAV) framework that emphasizes error and is distinct to entrepreneurship. The framework also provides context for concepts from other areas. The chapter explores ontological issues facing entrepreneurship research such as the knowledge problem and the nature of opportunities. Tracing the volatility of entrepreneurial action frustrates the assumptions of most research methodologies. The DAV framework is a wide-ranging conceptualization that helps engage the knowledge problem and conceptual asymmetry in entrepreneurship research by acknowledging the idea that the full stock of information about opportunity is never concentrated in a single mind. Opportunities are dynamic because resources like episodic knowledge can be patently new—not just a new combination of existing elements. Nonparametric analysis methods are especially appropriate for future entrepreneurship research in the tradition of the DAV. The chapter makes the case for distinct research in a specific new tradition, justified by calls in the literature and the logical nature of the opportunity phenomena examined by entrepreneurship research.
