Research@Ourso: Navigating the Relevance Gap

Have you ever wondered how groundbreaking academic research makes its way to the entrepreneurs and business leaders who could use it most? The process is not always as smooth as you might think.

Ted Waldron, Alvin C. Copeland Endowed Professor of Business in the LSU Stephenson Department of Entrepreneurship & Information Systems, tackled the thorny issues surrounding this question in a recent article published in the prestigious Journal of Business Venturing. He and his co-authors built a framework to address a long-standing challenge in academia: the "relevance gap", where academic research struggles to make its way to those who could most directly benefit from implementing new knowledge and practices.

“This article was partially motivated by growing public distrust of academic research,” Waldron remarked. “The underlying premise is that, by considering the broader relevance of research when conducting it, researchers can produce more trustworthy, useful insights that meaningfully shape business practice.”

 

A Framework for Translatable Research

The core issue is straightforward. While entrepreneurship scholars produce valuable knowledge, practitioners such as startup founders, angel investors, and other stakeholders rarely read scholarly journals to find it. Waldron and his co-authors argue that instead of hoping entrepreneurs will come to the research, the research must come to the entrepreneurs. They propose that researchers should design their studies from the very beginning to be easily translated for the media outlets that practitioners do read, such as Forbes or the Entrepreneur & Innovation Exchange.

“ Designing research solely for consumption by [a journals’] niche academic audiences, without considering its relevance to business practice, introduces the potential for disconnects between what this work reports academically and what happens realistically. ”

But how can scholars make their work more accessible without sacrificing academic rigor? The article proposes a practical framework centered on three key design criteria: Importance, Insight, and Impact. This approach serves as a guide for researchers who want their work to have real-world applications.

• Importance: This principle urges scholars to study phenomena that are timely and consequential to what’s happening in entrepreneurship right now. The goal should revolve around exploring real-world problems business leaders face, not just filling a gap in academic literature.
• Insight: Research must offer clear academic contributions that improve society’s understanding of a topic. Findings should be not only theoretically sound but also easily distillable into practical, usable advice for decision-makers.
• Impact: Instead of being an afterthought, the "practical implications" section of a paper should offer actionable advice, written in non-academic language, making future translation for a broader audience much easier.

“Getting someone – especially a highly trained researcher – to do something they aren’t trained or incentivized to do, regardless of the importance of doing it, constitutes a profound challenge,” Waldron noted. “However, various factors indicate that times are changing. For example, based on a survey of Journal of Business Venturing’s editors, we learned that some business schools are beginning to call for and incentivize research that can be disseminated beyond academic audiences—along with embracing scientists’ efforts to do so.”

 

Why This Matters Now

Waldron's research serves as an example of LSU's Scholarship First Agenda in action. Demonstrating the everyday relevance of academic work is more important than ever, and LSU’s university-wide mission calls on researchers to address critical, real-world problems and better the lives of citizens. For Ourso College students and alumni, as well as Louisiana business owners, a renewed focus on translatable research means gaining more direct access to cutting-edge knowledge that can inform their own ventures and help solve challenges they face every day.

However, for Waldron and his colleagues, empowering researchers to do this work requires looking further at the root causes of the very academic distrust their framework addresses. They plan to continue to investigate the systemic pressures that can sometimes lead research astray. “Of particular interest [to us] will be institutional design considerations that contribute to [distrust]—often unintentionally," Waldron said. "For example, does satisfying accrediting agencies and their requirements create administrative pressure for faculty to publish as much research as possible and thus to take ‘short cuts’ to satisfy this expectation?”

By addressing these institutional issues, Waldron hopes to clear the path for more scholars to ask the big, consequential questions about the state’s future, with the ultimate goal of equipping Louisiana’s brightest minds to tackle the state’s toughest challenges.

“ How do we incentivize and equip entrepreneurs to tackle the biggest, thorniest problems affecting Louisianans?  Poverty, health, population loss, infrastructure, and pollution, among other issues, would benefit from entrepreneurial attention and action. What might impact—whether positively or negatively—entrepreneurs’ efforts to cultivate commercial solutions to these sorts of seemingly intractable social problems? ”

Want to dive into the full research and data? Read the full article here.

 

About the Researcher

Theodore (Ted) Waldron is the Alvin C. Copeland Endowed Professor of Business at Louisiana State University. He earned his BS and MBA from Villanova University and his PhD from The University of Georgia. In addition to his academic career, Ted has worked in hospital administration and management consulting.

His research, which emphasizes theory development and qualitative research methods, has been published in top management and entrepreneurship journals and he serves as a field editor of the Journal of Business Venturing and an editor for Entrepreneur & Innovation Exchange.

Waldron applies experiential models to enable students to become more effective critical thinkers, problem solvers, leaders, communicators, and colleagues. These experiences typically involve real projects where students develop skills of meaning and value to their intended professions. Consistent with such efforts, he has also engaged in executive advisement for clients ranging from startups to multinationals and published widely read thought leadership works in Harvard Business Review and Entrepreneur & Innovation Exchange.