In this dialogue paper, we consider Zellweger and Zenger’s (2021) conceptualization of entrepreneurs as scientists, rooted in pragmatism. While we agree that pragmatism provides a useful but neglected foundation for studying the entrepreneurial journey, we maintain that entrepreneurs are more than scientists – in addition, they are engineers, artists, and designers. Our view is predicated on enfolding considerations of time, emergence, and the associated unsurmountable epistemological barrier of unknowability, which enable entrepreneurs to not only describe (predict) the world as scientists do, but also actively shape the future to fit their “mind.”

We draw on Searle's philosophy of language to distinguish between “opportunities” as intentional content directed towards a preferred future that entrepreneurs aim to fulfill and opportunities as conditions to be met for their satisfaction. We maintain that studying the former requires adopting a player stance rather than the analyst stance that prevails in the current literature. We build on pragmatist conceptions of truth and imagination to elaborate on the player stance and propose analogical abduction as a mechanism for conceiving and fulfilling “opportunities”. We develop a pragmatist process model of entrepreneurial reasoning that balances the two stances, and derive action principles for entrepreneurs from it.