I am an academic (SOAS University of London) who usually works in public policy. In 2023, I designed a "mini-MBA" for founders and realized a massive inefficiency: my students were dealing with problems that scholars study every day (liability of newness, signaling theory, dynamic capabilities, etc.), but they never saw the research because it was locked behind paywalls or written in dense academic-speak or just too recent to have added to the reading list!
I decided to bridge that gap. I performed a literature review and selected about 300 peer-reviewed entrepreneurship articles published in academic journals in 2025 and synthesized the findings into a practical guide.
Some non-obvious findings from the 2025 literature:
The "Ideator's Dilemma" in GenAI: Research shows GenAI reduces the cost of idea generation but creates a new cognitive burden: distinguishing between "hallucinated" viability and ideas that seem wrong only because they are novel/counter-intuitive (Chapter 3).
The "Passion" Paradox: While popular advice says "be passionate," recent studies (Jin et al., 2025) suggest that high-intensity passion in pitches actually increases perceived risk for investors unless balanced with specific "promotion-focused" language.
Signaling in Crowdfunding: "Linguistic hedging" (vague language) in campaign descriptions is now measurable as a negative signal, whereas specific disclosure of risks (not just strengths) increases trust/authenticity (Chapter 4).
The book is available here: https://entrepreneurshipscience.com/
I posted more contents in the linked website. I’m looking for feedback on which academic concepts feel most relevant to your actual daily grind as founders.
Happy to answer questions about the research!
(I hope the post is fine, I have just joined!)