Topic Selection & JBV Fit (jbv-topic-selection)

When to trigger

• You have an idea or a dataset but are unsure it belongs in JBV rather than a general management or strategy outlet
• A co-author asks "is this really an entrepreneurship paper?"
• You want to pick which disciplinary lens (economics, psychology, sociology) drives the question
• A desk reject said the work is "off-topic" or "entrepreneurship is incidental"

The JBV fit test

JBV publishes research on the entrepreneurial phenomenon in its myriad of forms — the antecedents, mechanisms, and consequences of entrepreneurship. Before anything else, pass this gate:

• Centrality: Is the creation of new ventures or new economic activity (or entrepreneurial cognition, behavior, financing, teams, social/sustainable/international entrepreneurship, or ecosystems) the heart of the contribution? If entrepreneurship is merely the empirical setting for a general theory of organizations, JBV is the wrong venue — that distinction is the single most common desk-reject reason at this FT50 flagship.
• Phenomenon, not method: The question must matter for understanding entrepreneurship, not exist to showcase a dataset or technique.
• Disciplinary lens: JBV is grounded in economics, psychology, and sociology and welcomes anthropology, geography, history, and multiple functional areas (finance, management, marketing, strategy). Name the primary lens — it shapes the mechanism and likely area-editor domain.

Sharpening the question

• State the question as a tension or puzzle in the entrepreneurial phenomenon, not as "no one has studied X in startups" (gap-spotting reads as weak here).
• Identify the unit and stage of the entrepreneurial process: nascent/pre-founding, founding, early growth, exit/failure. JBV studies span the whole life course.
• Decide whether you are offering "theories, narratives, and interpretations" or testing hypotheses — JBV explicitly welcomes both, so a rich interpretive question is legitimate, not a fallback.

Domain sweep (common JBV territories)

• Opportunity recognition, evaluation, and entrepreneurial judgment/cognition
• New-venture financing (VC, angels, crowdfunding, microfinance, bootstrapping)
• Founding teams, identity, passion, and entrepreneurial behavior
• Social, sustainable, and international/transnational entrepreneurship
• Entrepreneurial ecosystems, institutions, and regional context

Checklist

• Entrepreneurship / new venture creation is the central contribution, not the setting
• Primary disciplinary lens (econ / psych / sociology / other) named
• Stage of the entrepreneurial process specified
• Question framed as a phenomenon-puzzle, not a literature gap
• Plausible area-editor domain identified for routing
• Decision made: hypothesis-testing vs. narrative/interpretive theorizing

Fit triage and venue routing

When the centrality gate is borderline, use this table to decide whether JBV is the home or a sibling owns the question.

Worked micro-example: a fit decision (illustrative)

An author has Crunchbase data on AI startups and a finding that "advisory-board prestige predicts Series A." Triage:

• Centrality test: as stated, a signaling/legitimacy effect that could describe any firm raising capital — fails the gate.
• The fix that earns fit: reframe to the nascent stage — does advisory prestige substitute for the missing track record that defines the liability of newness, vanishing once a venture has its own operating history? Newness becomes the mechanism.
• Lens: sociology (legitimacy/endorsement) primary, economics (signaling) secondary — a multidisciplinary framing fitting JBV.
• Stage/unit: pre-Series-A nascent ventures, founder-and-venture level.
• Verdict: fit after reframing; the raw "prestige → funding" version is a desk-reject risk.

Calibration anchors (hedged)

• The highest-leverage screen is the centrality gate: if the contribution survives deleting the word "startup," it is probably not yet a JBV paper.
• JBV's identity leans toward micro-foundations and the process of emergence — opportunity, cognition, founding, early financing — differentiating it from strategy-interface entrepreneurship venues.
• Scope and welcomed disciplines evolve; treat any precise scope statement as guidance and confirm against the journal's current aims-and-scope.

Anti-patterns

• Entrepreneurship as window dressing — a generic org/strategy study run on a startup sample.
• Method-first — "I have Crunchbase data, what can I ask?" instead of a phenomenon puzzle.
• Single-discipline tunnel vision when a multidisciplinary framing is stronger.
• Gap-spotting ("understudied") as the sole justification.

Output format

【Phenomenon】the entrepreneurial puzzle in one sentence ...
【Centrality check】entrepreneurship central? yes/no + why ...
【Lens】primary discipline + secondary ...
【Stage/unit】nascent / founding / growth / exit ...
【Mode】hypothesis-testing or narrative/interpretive ...
【JBV fit verdict】fit / borderline / off-fit (→ alternative venue) ...
【Next step】jbv-theory-development