The coevolution of trust and behavioral uncertainty: Toward a theory of vulnerability acceptance in entrepreneurial ventures

Abstract Research Summary This conceptual study develops a process theory of vulnerability acceptance explaining how trust and behavioral uncertainty coevolve as entrepreneurial actors form, interpret, and realize opportunities. Trust is frequently invoked to explain creativity, exploration, and opportunity formation, yet remains theorized through predictability and evaluability, which entrepreneurial opportunities often lack ex ante. We distinguish three forms of vulnerability acceptance: uncertainty creating, releasing, and decreasing trust. Each transforms the uncertainty it engages, which in turn reinforces or unsettles that form, so no form is terminal. Their salience shifts across opportunity formation, interpretive recombination, and realization, and misalignment between a form and the conditions it confronts impairs entrepreneurial progress. Trust thereby becomes a means through which epistemic conditions are produced, not only a response to them. Managerial Summary Entrepreneurship exposes forms of vulnerability that cannot be explained by risk‐based models of trust alone. Entrepreneurs often face the practical question: “Trust them to do what?” The answer depends on the kind of agency they are willing to be vulnerable to, and it changes as an opportunity takes shape. That may mean backing people to take the work somewhere no one can yet specify, relying on others' expertise to make sense of what is emerging, or counting on them to deliver what was agreed. Trust is therefore not only a way of reducing uncertainty but a means of transforming it, and progress depends on recognizing when the prevailing form fits the conditions and when it does not.