Sayings and doings become ‘practice’ through ‘practice thirdness’: pivot in recipes for practice

The abductive logic behind the practice lens allows practice researchers to contextualize theorizing and emphasize non-generalizability of their findings. However, scholars are critical of this non-generalizability flaw. In this conceptual paper, we aim to go beyond such criticisms and constructively discuss how this flaw might be resolved. In doing so, we theorize ‘practice thirdness’ as the shared understanding of knowing how to do practice, at local and universal levels, and provide a framework for discussing the generalizability of practice. We take ‘pivot’, at the heart of the Lean Startup as our case, and based on different interpretations of this practice, we argue what entrepreneurs have said and what scholars have interpreted of what entrepreneurs have said do not show what they have actually done. Therefore, despite the formation of practice local thirdness, i.e. practice thirdness in a particular context, in the case of pivot, still, we need academic conversation to reach practice universal thirdness, i.e. practice thirdness across different contexts. We suggest that practice researchers take a neopragmatic lens for studying practice patterns across different contexts. Also, we argue why practice researchers should be open to other methods besides the commonly recommended (non)participant observation. Moreover, we propose a model for communicating and generalizing practice based on Peirce’s triadic model of semiosis and Nonaka and Takeuchi’s model of knowledge management.