Comment by marcus_holmes

Is there even such a thing as the "science of business"? One can form a hypothesis, and then conduct an experiment, but the experimental landscape is so messy that eliminating all other considerations is impossibly hard.

For example, there's a popular theory that the single major factor in startup success is timing - that the market is "ready" for ideas at specific times, and getting that timing right is the key factor in success. But it's impossible to predict when the market timing is right, you only find out in retrospect. How would you ever test this theory? There are so many other factors, half of which are outside the control of the experimenter, that you would have to conduct the experiment hundreds of time (effectively starting and failing at hundreds of startups) to exclude the confounding factors.