Productivity and reconfiguration practices in entrepreneurship: the COVID-19 lockdown as a test of entrepreneurs’ response to disruption

Evidence from African nations where high unemployment rates make entrepreneurship more appealing shows the quality of entrepreneurship education encourages business creation. Prior literature asserts high-quality entrepreneurship education must leverage actionable practices. We argue the entrepreneurial expertise of developed economies shapes the support they provide to emerging economies; thus, examining that expertise can yield global benefits. We begin with the theoretical premise that all businesses require practices for both productivity (i.e., ordinary capabilities) and reconfiguration (i.e., dynamic capabilities). However, most attention—both in developed economies (e.g., U.S. Census Bureau surveys) and in development interventions—is focused solely on productivity practices. To assess whether this focus is optimal, we treat the first COVID-19 lockdowns as a natural skills test for entrepreneurs and interview 21 small-business owners in the competitive, cash-constrained restaurant sectors in London and San Francisco. We learn interviewees master productivity practices but struggle with reconfiguration ones. Moreover, entrepreneurs may be aware of a reconfiguration practice but have difficulty implementing it. Furthermore, through a disruption, productivity practices can crowd out reconfiguration practices even in small businesses. Overall, we argue some businesses had highquality productivity and reconfiguration practices because they had a rudimentary innovation system. We recommend jointly leveraging the productivity literature and the emerging literature on theory-based entrepreneurship, especially as now applied to the African context. Moreover, we recommend adding topics relevant to responding to disruption, such as rudimentary innovation systems, to the curriculum development.