Real Growth Through Entrepreneurial Resourcefulness: Insights on the Entropy Problem from Andy Weir’s The Martian

Building on ecological economics and the firm growth literature, I propose a model of real growth through entrepreneurial resourcefulness to determine whether an isolated firm can grow if it can capture only the value it creates. I then use Andy Weir's bestseller The Martian to illustrate my arguments. The model contributes to the entrepreneurial resourcefulness literature by explaining how, and under which conditions, resourceful behavior can lead to real firm growth, positing that entrepreneurs can create ecosystems that enhance the marginal productivity of resources by leveraging the productive capacity and entropy-mitigating properties of human capital and natural capital. The model also contributes to the sustainable and innovative entrepreneurship literatures by recognizing limitations on the substitutability of resources, noting that even highly efficient allocation of resources cannot immunize actors from scarcity if production consumes critical capital or exceeds the rate of resource renewal. Finally, the model contributes to the entrepreneurial action literature by shedding light on our understanding of profit opportunities, noting that entrepreneurs are neither exclusively "world makers" nor "world takers," but akin to chefs using new production recipes to maximize the ingredients available. Such experimentation emphasizes that entrepreneurship is a process of resource transformation, not just customer discovery.