Almost every academic paper on management and entrepreneurship topics includes a practical implications section. It should be the place where theoretical ideas become useful practices. But there can be challenges to this effort, according to new research co-authored by Jon Carr, Jenkins Family Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship.

Those “practical implications” sections often get the least attention from authors, Carr and his authorship team across several universities discuss in “Research to Knowledge-Driven Action: Practical Relevance of Entrepreneurship Research.” 

The meta-analysis assessed 232 articles published between 2007 and 2019 in the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal. Carr and his coauthors identified eight characteristics of the articles’ practical implications sections. More than half (56.5%) sought to extend management knowledge around their topics. A little more than a third (36%) offered actionable, operational steps readers could take to use research insights.

Nearly one in five (19.4%) of the papers analyzed offered no practical counsel at all.

“A lot of times, we don’t do a really good job of having solid, practical implications,” Carr says. “Extending management knowledge is a big part of what we do, but putting more emphasis on measurable, immediate, actionable things should be a priority as well.”

Characteristic	% of articles
Extends management knowledge	56.5%
Actionable/operational	36%
Not practical	19.4%
Novel	18.7%
Generalizable	16.3%
Thorough	10.2%
Measurable	6%
Immediate	1.4%

Carr and his fellow researchers find several culprits for the short shrift given to practical implications. Among them: Doctoral programs invest time and resources in developing future scholars’ ability to gain both broad and deep knowledge about theory and their fields. They pay less attention to translating theory into practice. There could also be mismatches between the questions that interest scholars and the problems practitioners need help solving.

The meta-analysis suggests several ways publishers, reviewers, scholars and universities could improve the quality of practical implications guidance:

• Journals could include characteristics of practical implications in their instructions for article reviewers. They could also add specific questions about how manuscripts can impact practice to surveys completed during review submission.
• In tenure and annual reviews, universities could give more weight to publications that focus on application, and on the actual impact of candidates’ published articles
• Scholars could also seek feedback from practitioners on their manuscripts

Carr recently discussed the paper, its effects on his own approach to practical implications and more:

Why does giving clear practical implications matter?

Our scholarship should understand and operate at the speed at which businesses and individuals are operating. This paper got published very quickly because this is a very fundamental aspect of what we should do as academic scholars. 

We catalogued these characteristics associated with whether something’s practical or not. Is it actionable? Can you actually execute on it?

Is it novel? Is it generalizable—can it apply to many, many different things? Is it thorough? Is it measurable? How immediate is it? Can I do it now, or is it something we still have to figure out over the course of time?

Using that framework, we catalog all these studies, and we see that, for instance, extending management knowledge is a big part of what we do. But putting more emphasis on measurable, immediate, actionable things should be a priority as well.

What surprised you during the course of this research?

Authors themselves don’t really spend a lot of time on these practical implications portions. Editors and reviewers emphasize these implications as part of the decision-making process. They tend to focus more on the academic insights, and the practical implications are just sort of another component that we have to have to have. And that’s true of all research in business. 

As social science areas mature, the desire for the elegance of the study can take over its practical relevance and applicability. We’ve got to come to grips with that. That’s why we  wanted to do a paper on this topic. 

As an entrepreneur yourself, you’ve been on both sides of this. When an entrepreneur looks at a piece of academic research, how do they view it?

Entrepreneurship is, in many ways, a very applied field. How do you build teams? What are their characteristics? How do you pursue money? How do investors look at you?

A lot of our best, most cited work touches on these actual phenomena. There are things that come out of our studies that are absolutely useful and can be applied to a launch or how you bring money into a company. But if it’s some faraway conversation about something nebulous that could someday happen, it’s not as useful to entrepreneurs.

Do you have any other work planned on this line of inquiry?

One of these characteristics—the idea of actionable, operational research—is very important to look at more deeply. That would be the kind of study where you would ask: To what degree are good, actionable studies more relevant than others that aren’t?