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Welcome to the special issue on Applying Experimental Methods to Advance Entrepreneurship Research! With this opening article, we first articulate the importance of experimental methods to advance entrepreneurship research. We note the comparative paucity of experimental methods in entrepreneurship, and the Journal of Business Venturing (JBV), in particular. We encourage researchers–those with and without experience in experimental methods–to consider experiments as part of their methodological toolkit, and we explain the benefits to the field for expanding our use of experimental methods. Doing so, we provide a reminder of the importance of causality and explain why causality matters for the field of entrepreneurship. We further posit that one reason for the comparative paucity of experimental methods in entrepreneurship research may be that entrepreneurship research employing experimental methods is not surviving the publication process. We address this possibility by offering practical advice for those seeking to publish experimental methods in entrepreneurship journals. Using exemplars from the special issue, we outline five areas (joining a conversation, theoretical contribution, ecological validity, samples and representativeness, and securing and enriching causal analysis) that may improve researchers' efforts to publish experimental research in premier entrepreneurship journals such as JBV.

We conclude this opening article by introducing and summarizing the nine articles that comprise this special issue. Despite their common focus on experimental methods, the articles represent a diverse set of theoretical and topical …