Knight and day: when theoretical uncertainty gets real

Abstract We challenge Knight’s century-old classic model of entrepreneurship by arguing hypotheses that he was wrong not only about the relationship between uncertainty and entrepreneurial performance but also about the core assumption that all relevant parties perceive the same minimum level of uncertainty involved in the focal business problem they confront. We test our three hypotheses on data collected from a recent survey of northeastern US entrepreneurial small business owners regarding their perceptions of the current pandemic and their behaviors and plans in responding to it. As the first paper to test Knight’s logic while strictly conforming to his definition of uncertainty – as more than risky – we find that while Knight’s logic is sound theoretically, it is deeply flawed in reality. We find that non-risk uncertainty has a more complex relationship with entrepreneurship, including significant negative effects mostly ignored by Knight. As well, our results indicate that his premise of the universality of a minimum perceived uncertainty level across potential entrepreneurs is unjustified. The practical implications include a call for policy-makers to help clarify and reduce uncertainties while protecting entrepreneurs from their downsides, or at least not adding to them (as some Covid responses appeared to do).