In your article ‘Why economics does not understand business’ (April 8th) you highlight that ‘economics likes to see itself as a foundational discipline, like physics, not a practical one, like engineering.’ In its quest to be physics-like and evidence based, economists are prone to a form of selection bias by focusing on problems where data is relatively abundant. In doing so, economists tend to understudy problems where data is necessarily scarce as in the context of firms innovating to maintain competitive advantage.