Why entrepreneurship can’t solve every problem (and that’s okay)

By Canan Keles (Research Storyteller)

Can entrepreneurship really solve all our problems?

Jan Keim, Susan Müller, and Pascal Dey challenge this assumption in their recent paper, published in the Journal of Business Venturing Insights. They call it the “panacea myth”: the notion that entrepreneurs alone can tackle our biggest social and environmental issues.

The myth persists through three mechanisms: assuming local wins scale automatically, ignoring the political roots of problems, and a positivity bias in our field. Grand challenges like poverty or climate change aren’t caused by single actors and can’t be solved by them alone.

This matters for anyone working on complex social problems. Policymakers risk missing structural solutions if they rely solely on entrepreneurial fixes. Scholars need to question hero narratives. Practitioners benefit from collaboration with civil society and government rather than going it alone.

Watch the video to explore these ideas further.