Laboratory Experiments as a Tool in the Empirical Economic Analysis of High-Expectation Entrepreneurship

High-expectation start-ups are firms launched by entrepreneurs with high ambitions for growth. The encounter between new technology and entrepreneurship that characterizes such new ventures has a significant impact on the nature and speed of economic development, driving the growth of high-technology industries and helping to make the economic system open, complex and adaptive. Thus high-expectation entrepreneurship deserves special attention in entrepreneurship education. This paper introduces and explains the importance of high-expectation entrepreneurship. Then, using an approach borrowed from both experimental scientific research and the practice of medicine, the authors propose a form of business idea testing and entrepreneur training in a laboratory environment. The ability to transpose, test and iterate new ideas and models in a business laboratory has significant potential in terms of promoting rapid learning and the preliminary validation of a new business idea – thus cutting risk, reducing cost and maximizing revenue potential. The authors argue that this approach is far more appropriate for entrepreneurship development in the new economic environment than traditional business education models.