The value of delays: market- and policy-induced adjustment processes as a motivating factor in dynamic entrepreneurship

Reaching societal consensus on how to deal with new issues, e.g. agreeing on commercial law for e-commerce, takes time. Traditional economics has considered such anomalies as market imperfections. By contrast, this paper suggests perceiving such “delays” as windows of opportunity for entrepreneurs. These considerations from evolutionary economics and entrepreneurship will be explored in a case study on disease management services in Germany. It will become clear that detailed ex ante legal regulation restricts entrepreneurial room for variation. To avoid this loss of knowledge generation, the government should abstain from introducing such premature intervention without having to challenge existing meta-rules.