The nature of entrepreneurial experience, business failure and comparative optimism

By Deniz Ucbasaran, Paul Westhead, Mike Wright, M. Flores. 2010

574 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Entrepreneurial (i.e. business ownership) experience may enable some entrepreneurs to temper their comparative optimism in subsequent ventures. The nature of entrepreneurial experience can shape how entrepreneurs adapt. Using data from a representative survey of 576 entrepreneurs in Great Britain, we find that experience with business failure was associated with entrepreneurs who are less likely to report comparative optimism. Portfolio entrepreneurs are less likely to report comparative optimism following failure; however, sequential (also known as serial) entrepreneurs who have experienced failure do not appear to adjust their comparative optimism. Conclusions and implications for entrepreneurs and stakeholders are discussed.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Management of Technology and Innovation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5338f6e76a0d01cd30e6032c4589f7ca567fb264

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In Applied Psychology

In Management of Technology and Innovation

Citations in the corpus

What is entrepreneurial failure? Implications for future research (2016, methodology): “For example, Ucbasaran et al. (2010) operationalized this concept of failure by asking respondents whether they had previously closed or sold a business because it had failed to meet their expectations.”
Disentangling the antecedents of ambidexterity: Exploration and exploitation (2018, methodology): “We used a measure of relative optimism of entrepreneurs drawn from prior research (Cooper et al., 1988; Ucbasaran et al., 2010).”
Do entrepreneurs always benefit from business failure experience? (2018, background): “Business failure has been defined in the literature in diverse ways (e.g., Shepherd and Haynie, 2011; Ucbasaran et al., 2010); Ucbasaran et al.”
Do serial entrepreneurs run successively better-performing businesses? (2013, background): “In which case, over-optimismmay diminish over time (Ucbasaran et al., 2010), suggesting different public policy recommendations, including possibly laxer bankruptcy laws (Lee et al., 2011).”
Failing firms and successful entrepreneurs: serial entrepreneurship as a temporal portfolio (2013, background): “2005) and/or the effects of experience on the magnitude of firm performance, which so far they have either found to be (a) insignificant (Alsos and Kolvereid 1999) or (b) having an inverted U shaped form (Ucbasaran et al. 2009) or (c) significant when previous experience involves VC-backed firm succ”
The Effects of Business Failure Experience on Successive Entrepreneurial Engagements: An Evolutionary Phase Model (2018, background): “Studies have therefore argued that entrepreneurs’ prior experience and knowledge evolves as strategic dividends or hangovers and intertwine with the circumstances of time and place to influence the character of subsequently started ventures (Hessels et al., 2011; Ogbonna & Harris, 2001; Ucbasaran et”
Entrepreneurial leadership, capabilities and firm growth (2015, background): “Newly emerging research examines the effect of experiences of failure (Ucbasaran et al., 2010, 2013) and also the psychology and behavioural impact of fear of failure.”
Better Together? Signaling Interactions in New Venture Pursuit of Initial External Capital (2016, background): “Absent such a third-party affiliation, potential investors could question the usefulness of the entrepreneur’s prior experience or the ability of the entrepreneur to learn from their mistakes (Ucbasaran et al., 2010).”
Keep Calm and Carry On: Emotion Regulation in Entrepreneurs’ Learning from Failure (2018, result): “This proportion is consistent with the samples used in previous studies (e.g., Politis & Gabrielsson, 2009; Ucbasaran et al., 2010).”
Contextualization and the advancement of entrepreneurship research (2014, background): “This learning process may depend on the nature of prior successes and failures (Ucbasaran et al., 2010).”