Polycrisis entrepreneurship – Theoretical & methodological challenges and opportunities

While entrepreneurship theories have historically assumed institutional stability, the contemporary global environment is increasingly defined by a polycrisis—a continuous, overlapping, and mutually reinforcing web of ecological, geopolitical, and economic crises. Because current literature predominantly treats crises as discrete, episodic anomalies, existing theoretical frameworks risk misidentifying the core nature of entrepreneurship in this chronic state of instability. This paper outlines critical theoretical and methodological challenges and opportunities associated with studying polycrisis entrepreneurship. Theoretically, I argue that polycrisis entrepreneurship is characterized by causal entanglement, loss of eventedness, and chronic temporality. Building on these characteristics, I highlight the need to contextualize the polycrisis based on geographic variance, regional institutional resilience, and threat typology (latent versus manifest). Furthermore, I emphasize that entrepreneurs typically react to proximal, micro-level manifestations of crises rather than distal, macro-level crises. Methodologically, I argue that polycrisis entrepreneurship requires approaches capable of addressing both chronic uncertainty and causal entanglement. To capture such complexity, I propose methodological pathways forward, including epistemological flexibility, multidisciplinary integration, and the adoption of dynamic, multilevel research designs. I also discuss prospective theorizing as a means of examining anticipated and imagined futures and critique the field's reliance on variance-based modeling, which assumes ceteris paribus conditions that do not exist within the current reality.