Playing With Ambiguity: Developing a Theory of Play in New Venture Creation

This dissertation studies entrepreneurial behavior within the nascent stages and activities of venture creation. New ventures are characterized by ambiguity, particularly in high-technology contexts, where neither goals, problems, nor solutions are clearly defined. In such environments, entrepreneurs must adopt strategies that diverge from the structured, rational approaches of established firms, drawing instead on exploratory and adaptive modes of action. Integrating insights from entrepreneurship and psychology, this thesis introduces play and playfulness as a novel lens for understanding how entrepreneurs navigate the pervasive ambiguity of early-stage venture creation. By examining playfulness as an important yet overlooked element of entrepreneurial action, this thesis sheds light on a novel strategic frame that fosters exploratory behavior in response to ambiguous and ill-defined contexts. The dissertation comprises three interrelated papers that employ conceptual, qualitative, and experimental methods to develop a theory of playfulness in entrepreneurship.
The first essay establishes the conceptual foundations of entrepreneurial playfulness. Building on psychological theories of play and entrepreneurship, the paper develops a three-part framework of playfulness as the behavioral orientation that underlies playful entrepreneurial logics for action. Playfulness is compared with other forms of entrepreneurial logics, thereby enriching our understanding of how entrepreneurs draw on different modes of behavior to take action under ambiguity.
The second chapter is an empirical investigation of how founders navigate ambiguity in early-stage venture creation. Drawing on an inductive qualitative study of eleven startups in an accelerator in Copenhagen, the paper develops a theory of how ambiguous problem spaces are transformed into exploratory action through the strategic frame of playfulness. The findings lead to a four-stage process model that theorizes how a playful behavioral orientation shapes and sustains entrepreneurial action under conditions of ambiguity. This process model shows how playfulness sustains creative action and emotional resilience when neither goals nor means are predefined, thereby extending action-oriented and behavioral perspectives in entrepreneurship.
The third paper tests the causal impact of playfulness on the quality of entrepreneurial problem-solving outcomes. This study is based on a randomized field experiment conducted as a problem-solving hackathon in Amsterdam. For the study, we recruited 144 entrepreneurs and aspiring founders who were randomly assigned into 72 teams. Half of the teams engaged in playful priming activities prior to tackling a real-world problem-solving challenge, while the other half engaged in an identical event, but without playfulness priming. The findings provide evidence that playfulness can be deliberately cultivated and that it enhances entrepreneurial performance in this real-world setting.
Together, these three papers advance a unified theory of playfulness as a strategy for navigating ambiguity in nascent ventures. The papers demonstrate that playfulness is a behavioral orientation that enables entrepreneurs to engage creatively, adaptively, and resiliently with ambiguous environments. By integrating conceptual, qualitative, and experimental approaches, the dissertation offers a multi-dimensional account of how playfulness can be cultivated and leveraged as a strategic logic of entrepreneurial action.