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The research aims to explore the relationships between the digital capabilities of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), their participation in global value chains and their adoption of innovative business models. Additionally, the study investigates how the prior experiences of entrepreneurial failure may influence or moderate these relationships.

To address these research objectives, the study draws upon data obtained from the Flash Eurobarometer 486 survey, a comprehensive dataset that explores the challenges faced by 13,197 European MSMEs as they navigate the complexities of growth, the integration of sustainable business models and the incorporation of digital technologies. To test the proposed hypotheses, the research employs multivariate logistic regression analysis.

Digital capabilities are found to be positively associated with business model innovation, while integration into global value chains is linked to a higher likelihood of implementing new business models. Interestingly, entrepreneurial failure did not significantly influence the relationship between digital capabilities and the adoption of new business models. In contrast, entrepreneurial failure significantly moderated the impact of global value chain inclusion on business model innovation, particularly in MSMEs with a history of failure.

This article provides practical guidance to entrepreneurs and companies interested in enhancing their digital strategies and engagement in global value chains, considering the entrepreneurs' business histories.

Many entrepreneurs often struggle with the fear of failure, which can be detrimental to both their business and personal well-being. To better understand the factors that contribute to this fear, the authors conducted research on the impact of various obstacles, such as limited financial resources, risk aversion, stress and hard work avoidance, and prior business failures. Additionally, the authors explored the effects of social capital in mitigating these obstacles and their relationship to fear of failure in entrepreneurship.

The authors conducted a survey with 440 young Iraqi entrepreneurs using non-probabilistic and purposive methods. The survey instrument included multiple measuring scales, which were provided in both English and Arabic. The authors analysed valid responses using structural equation modelling (SEM) with partial least squares (PLS).

The findings show that the fear of failure in entrepreneurship is negatively influenced by factors such as limited financial access, risk aversion, and past business failures. However, aversion to stress and hard work did not have a significant impact. The findings also show that social capital could potentially mitigate these negative factors.

The theoretical and practical implications of this study manifest in revealing the difficulties entrepreneurs encounter in developing countries like Iraq, where entrepreneurship is vital for economic growth. The study's limitations stem from its focus on one country and the use of a single survey method. Future research could use varied methods across multiple countries for a more comprehensive view.

This study sheds light on the factors that are obstacles for entrepreneurs to starting a business in emerging economies like Iraq.

This study's main objective is to examine the effect of learning from entrepreneurial failure on performance, with a type of failure as a moderator variable. Interactions between internal and external causes of failure and learning from entrepreneurial failure are also investigated, as well as entrepreneurs' aspects (i.e. age, experience and education) and organisational contextual factors (i.e. size, sector and location).

This study employed a hypothetico-deductive approach through a survey of 250 purposively sampled entrepreneurs who had suffered business failures. The survey data were subjected to regression analysis and moderated regression using WarpPLS software and an independent sample t test for an in-depth analysis.

The results indicated that learning from entrepreneurial failure positively affected business performance, an effect moderated by the type of failure, particularly with large failures. Only perceived internal causes of failure exerted a positive effect on learning from entrepreneurial failure; the external causes did not. The effect of failure on business performance was stronger on entrepreneurs who were older and experienced, had non-university educations and operated small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) outside Java–Bali islands.

This study's findings provide empirical evidence that supports the experiential learning theory and attribution theory in explaining the interaction between learning and failure, its cause, its consequences and its magnitude as perceived by entrepreneurs of SMEs in Indonesia, where the rate of failure is relatively high. The authors’ study also emphasises the roles of the entrepreneur and organisational contextual factors, which matter in learning to improve performance.

Exposure to a public health threat of significant proportions made current models inadequate to explain the failure phenomenon in small businesses. Hence, the need to reimagine the phenomenon. Borrowing from the principles of biology, this study extended theoretical and empirical perspectives on the failure phenomenon by unpacking its constituent elements and the measurement metrics using the regeneration lens.

Based on a cohort tracked over time, the study estimated the survival probabilities of small and medium-scale enterprises (SMEs) with and without regeneration using the Kaplan–Meier method. The study investigated the factors that predict enterprise regenerative capacity using the multivariate Cox proportional hazard ratios.

Rates of interruption in business activity, by month, ranged between 0% and 18% during the follow-up period. True mortality rates hovered between 0% and 4% over the same period. Over three in five SMEs that experienced interruption in business activity without ceasing operations regenerated at some point in time during the follow-up period. The survival probabilities beyond the follow-up period were 0.85 and 0.44 with and without regeneration effects, respectively. Fresh capital injection (+), the introduction of new/improved processes or products/services (+), perceived business outlook (+) and the presence of debt (−) influenced the capacity to regenerate.

The cohort was followed for only six months. There is a need to continue interrogating the failure phenomenon in other contexts over longer periods using the regeneration lens. Bringing on board academia, financial institutions and other SME-related ecosystem players will be strategic.

The approach provides a more nuanced understanding of the life and well-being of enterprises under conditions of disruption. Improving the precision and validity of failure-related statistics enhances their utility in policy and remediation-related discussions.

The results did not show significant differences in SME mortality rates between male and female-owned enterprises. The results provide further evidence that the failure phenomenon is ungendered. As such, financial institutions and the SME ecosystem at large must eliminate perceptual gender biases in the financing and other support to SMEs.

The study used the principles of biology to reimagine the failure phenomenon in small businesses. The approach breathes life into entrepreneurship research and policy.

Given that 45% of new businesses fail in their first five years (US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020), individuals often observe others' entrepreneurial failures (EFs) in their vicinity. The purpose of this paper is to review the effects of vicarious EFs on individuals by proposing both entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial identity aspiration as mediators, which are widely studied proximal antecedents of entrepreneurial intent.

Using structural equation modeling, the authors empirically test survey data collected from 10,020 college students across 46 colleges or universities in Brazil. The hypothesized model examines the mediating effects of vicarious EFs on individuals' entrepreneurial intent via entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial identity aspiration.

The findings confirm that vicarious EFs negatively affect one's entrepreneurial self-efficacy and that entrepreneurial self-efficacy mediates the effect of vicarious EFs on one's entrepreneurial intent. On the other hand, vicarious EFs positively affect one's entrepreneurial identity aspiration, and entrepreneurial identity aspiration mediates the effect of vicarious failures on entrepreneurial intent.

The entrepreneurship literature focuses mainly on the consequences of EF on those entrepreneurs who have experienced failure. However, there is a lack of knowledge regarding how that failure impacts others in its vicinity. This study provides new insight into the effects of vicarious EFs in facilitating individuals' entrepreneurial intent and presents theoretical and practical implications to promote greater levels of entrepreneurial intent in individuals.

This research aimed to examine entrepreneurial fear of failure and entrepreneurial well-being from the perspectives of incubated and nonincubated startups during crises.

Data were collected by distributing online questionnaires to 152 respondents comprising 43 incubated and 109 nonincubated startups in Indonesia. A multivariate discriminant analysis procedure was used to examine the interrelationships between both groups at the discovery, validation, customer creation and construction stages.

The result showed a significant difference between these startups at various stages, which was analyzed to provide insights into the relevant dimensions of fear of failure for startups. The essence of entrepreneurial well-being during crises is in accordance with the role of business incubators in an emerging market economy.

Startups need to innovate in order to grow while considering other factors such as work-life balance and financial resource availability. This is important to ensure they have sufficient motivating dosage of fear of failure.

The present study evaluates incubated and nonincubated startups in an emerging market economy by using both the entrepreneurial fear of failure and well-being to capture possible differences between groups. The context of pandemic crises helps us formulate appropriate approaches taken by incubators and startups in the future crises.

This study aims to develop and test a framework for studying the failure of new women entrepreneurs in the small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) sector.

Using a sample of 114 unsuccessful entrepreneurs in Kigali, Rwanda, this study aimed to identify key failure factors of women-owned SMEs. This study used mixed methods where quantitative data were analysed using the principal component approach with Varimax rotation to reduce the variables to only three clusters.

The study findings revealed that the failure of women-owned SMEs results from the entrepreneur’s inability followed by the enterprise incompetence, which are both internally controllable factors and the inauspicious business environment. These findings contribute to the validity of the dynamic capability theory by explaining how well internal and external factors must stay glued together to avoid failure among women-owned SMEs, something that was not yet previously well documented so far.

New SMEs are considered a noteworthy constituent of Rwandan development. Unfortunately, most new SMEs, in general, do not grow; their failure rate is high (70%), which raised many worries for both researchers and policymakers as to why this occurs at this stage of business growth. Therefore, to the best of the authors’ knowledge this paper is the first to analyse the reasons for the failure of Rwandan women-owned SMEs in the service sector. These findings are important because they suggest that policies designed to reduce the incidence of SMEs’ failure should take account of the two main factors influencing failure among women entrepreneurs.

In this study, we question: how do the social costs of failure interact with gendered institutions to affect the early stage entrepreneurship activity? We address this question by employing the institutional theory and a unique dataset of 286,989 entrepreneurs across 35 countries.

To test our hypotheses, we use a multilevel modeling analysis that nests individual entrepreneurs within the countries. To capture individual and country-level variables, we constructed a unique dataset that combines data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), European Flash Barometer (EUFB), World Bank Development Indicator (WDI), World Bank Doing Business Report (WBDB) and World Economic Forum (WEF).

Our analysis confirms that higher levels of the country-level gender equality positively correlate with the early-stage entrepreneurship activity of women. Moreover, we find that this positive relationship is amplified in institutional environments with high social costs of failure, suggesting that societal intolerance for failure can exacerbate the negative effect of gender inequality on the participation of women in entrepreneurship.

Our research contributes to academic interest on the role of legitimacy in women entrepreneurship and is of particular interest to international business scholars, seeking a better understanding of multidimensional construction of institutional frameworks across countries. In this study, we set out to address an important research question: how do the social costs of failure interact with gendered institutions to affect entrepreneurship activity? Our study provides a comprehensive portrait of gendered institutions by including the framework conditions of education, healthcare and political power. We found that in societies with gender equality, the likelihood of individuals engaging in the early-stage entrepreneurship activity is higher and that the positive relationship is strengthened in national environments with high social costs of failure.

Our study findings underscore the need for government policies addressing global gender gaps in economic empowerment. In particular, policies assisting women in obtaining education in high-growth industries like information technology or providing funding to women-dominated industries may foster activity for women seeking to do business in such industries. Such policies connect the early-stage entrepreneurship activities with gender equality concerns and initiatives.

Regarding the social costs of failure construct, specifically, prior studies generally focus narrowly on the context of failed entrepreneurs. We cast a wider net on men and women entrepreneurs’ entry decisions (irrespective of prior experience with business failure) and provide new views on the effects of social costs of failure on entrepreneurial ecosystems. We also extend the research on the legitimacy of women as entrepreneurs with the gender equality construct.

Unlike previous studies, which often focus on the “3Ms” of market, money and management, our research adopts a more holistic perspective. We recognize that the opportunities and challenges faced by entrepreneurs are shaped not only by individual skills and resources but also by the broader macroenvironment. By incorporating the framework conditions of education, healthcare and political power, alongside the intricate interplay of social costs and norms, our study paints a comprehensive picture of the landscape of female entrepreneurship.

This study aimed to examine the relationship between spiritual capital and small business innovation in a developing market economy and the highly religious society of Minangkabau.

A quantitative method was used by analyzing the data with partial least squares (PLS), comprising 278 entrepreneurial and high-growth aspiration small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) owners in a developing economy such as Indonesia.

The results showed that spiritual capital was a source of acquiring knowledge from innovation failure situations, serving as a catalyst for the occurrence of novelty and differentiation-related innovation.

The perspective of spiritual capital was provided within a religious community, showing that future reports should produce comparative analyses from varying contexts. Since understanding entrepreneurs' perspectives and spiritual capital situation remained ambiguous, the performance of qualitative analysis was crucial.

Entrepreneurs were expected to obtain considerable benefits from spiritual capital as a source of inspiration for differentiation and higher levels of novelty-related innovation. Similarly, policymakers should implement the capital and learn from failure to evaluate entrepreneurial SMEs concerning their capabilities.

Previous studies were unable to acknowledge an alternative source of innovation in a specific context, such as entrepreneurial SMEs with high-growth aspirations and spiritual capital. This is because capital contributes to innovation, helps in the assimilation of innovative knowledge and causes novelty-related innovation.

This paper aims to examine the factors that lead to the failure of startups in India and proposes a ‘Four Dimensional (4D) Strategic Framework’ to drive success.

This study is exploratory and uses a narrative analysis methodology to analyse the accounts of key startup stakeholders – founders, investors, former employees and consumers; to identify their failure factors. A conveniently selected sample of 165 startups was studied to understand better the reasons for their failure within a thematic framework developed from David Feinleib’s (2012) handbook “Why Startups Fail”.

Results indicate that a dearth of capital or running out of money and inadequate sales and marketing strategy, which leads businesses to fall behind rivals and lose money on each transaction, are the most common factors for startup failure in India.

“Startups” are substantial for emerging economies like India because they fuel technological innovation and economic progress and provide for the modern workforce’s needs and aspirations. However, they seem to be typically unprofitable, with a modest probability of survival. Subsisting studies mainly focus primarily on success factors and very few on why startups fail, with significant disagreement on an appropriate methodology. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that analyses failure factors of Indian startups using narrative analysis of its key stakeholders. It aims to aid the conception of profitable entrepreneurship by reducing the failure frequency in the startup and small business ecology.