Search results

To increase the understanding of how entrepreneurship education impacts entrepreneurial careers, the purpose of the paper is to investigate the role that a venture creation program (VCP) might have in mitigating or surpassing a lack of other antecedents of entrepreneurial careers. In particular, the authors focus on entrepreneurial pedigree and prior entrepreneurial experience.

Data from graduates of VCPs at three universities in Northern Europe were collected through an online survey. Questions addressed graduate background prior to education, yearly occupational employment subsequent to graduation and graduates' own perceptions of entrepreneurial activity in employment positions. The survey was sent to 1,326 graduates and received 692 responses (52.2% response rate).

The type of VCP, either independent (Ind-VCP) or corporate venture creation (Corp-VCP), influenced the mitigation of prior entrepreneurial experience. Prior entrepreneurial experience, together with Ind-VCP, made a career as self-employed more likely. However, this was not the case for Corp-VCP in subsequently choosing intrapreneurial careers. Entrepreneurial pedigree had no significant effect on career choice other than for hybrid careers.

Entrepreneurial experience gained from VCPs seems to influence graduates toward future entrepreneurial careers. Evidence supports the conclusion that many VCP graduates who lack prior entrepreneurial experience or entrepreneurial pedigree can develop sufficient entrepreneurial competencies through the program.

This study offers novel evidence that entrepreneurship education can compensate for a lack of prior entrepreneurial experience and exposure for students preparing for entrepreneurial careers.

Previous experience is a critical factor affecting entrepreneurial activities; however, it has not been fully studied in the existing literature. This study attempts to comprehensively reveal the routes and mechanisms of occupational experience that affect entrepreneurial activities and assess the entrepreneurial potential of different occupational practitioners.

By matching occupational characteristics with entrepreneurs' competence, this study proposes ten hypotheses about how occupational experience affects entrepreneurial entry and performance. This empirical study is based on the Occupational Information Network database and Chinese survey data. Factor and regression analyses were used in the empirical research.

This study verifies that different occupational practitioners have varied entrepreneurial potential. Occupational experience, including occupational uncertainty, market contact and social capital, gained from previous experience significantly affects entrepreneurial entry. Meanwhile, occupational characteristics, including management experience, marketing experience, social capital, financial capital, risk-taking ability and creativity, accumulated from previous experience, have a significant impact on entrepreneurial performance.

This study is a pioneering attempt to reveal the relationship between occupational experience and entrepreneurial activities. The transmission mechanism of previous experiences affecting entrepreneurial activities is comprehensively revealed by relaxing the assumption of a representative occupation. These findings provide a theoretical foundation for empirical evidence and have important practical value.

Entrepreneurship is a process of learning. The entrepreneurial learning process incorporates a cumulative series of multifaceted entrepreneurial experiences, which generally involve the development of new insights and behaviours. This study aimed to determine whether entrepreneurial experience has an influence on the preferred learning styles of students. The study also investigated the appropriateness of the Reduced Kolb Learning Style Inventory as a measuring instrument.

The study was conducted on 586 male and 690 female students from South Africa (n = 1042) and Norway (n = 244). The Reduced Kolb Learning Style Inventory, making use of principal correspondence analysis, was used to determine the preferred learning styles, while the students' level of entrepreneurial experience was captured by items addressing prior entrepreneurial experience.

The analysis revealed a simpler measure of students' preferred learning styles, comprising a total of 12 items with three items per learning style. The study revealed that the preferred learning style was more important for students who had entrepreneurial experience than for those with less entrepreneurial experience. If students with entrepreneurial experience have stronger concerns for how they learn, it contributes to the understanding of the content of entrepreneurial learning.

A modified Reduced Kolb Learning Style Inventory resulted in a concise instrument measuring students' preferred learning style in adherence to Kolb's work and evidenced its usefulness. This study contributes to a field that has been under-researched, related to the association between students' past and current entrepreneurial experience and their learning style preference, and aims to bridge the two research fields. This research explores these links and points to how these insights could inform entrepreneurship education.

Though often considered a critical factor in predicting venture success, past research into the effects of founder experience has often produced mixed results. What factors influence founders’ decisions to use, or not use, experience they possess? This study examines the role job dissatisfaction might play in a founder's decision to leverage multiple types of experience (sector, entrepreneurial, role model and education) on external (sales performance) and internal (founder intrinsic satisfaction) outcomes. Greater dissatisfaction was associated with decreased likelihood of founders building on sector experience. While dissatisfaction influenced the use of experience, greater experience levels did not consistently account for higher levels of venture sales performance. Moreover, no differences were found in founders’ intrinsic satisfaction, regardless of sales performance. The differing results in the two outcome measures suggest potential differences in the goals and consequent actions of entrepreneurs in the study. By examining multiple types of experience, and what might moderate founders’ use of that experience, these findings provide additional insights into the entrepreneurial process.

Previous research has predominantly focused on the meaning of prior entrepreneurial experience in the context of habitual entrepreneurship. To date, however, little is known about how previous experience affects the way in which several firms can be managed simultaneously. The purpose of this study is to examine entrepreneurial learning in the context of portfolio entrepreneurship and clarify how it is possible to manage several firms at the same time.

An exploratory study using a case method was conducted (Eisenhardt; Yin) by focusing on one portfolio entrepreneur. In this study, the case can be considered as unusual thus being suitable for a single‐case study. Data were collected through interviews and the entrepreneur also provided the researchers with a written description of the development and present situation of his entrepreneurial career.

This study proposes that failures may develop entrepreneurial knowledge as well as founding experiences. Development of entrepreneurial knowledge is viewed as leading to new ways of organizing and managing start‐up firms. Learning through previous experiences has strengthened entrepreneurial knowledge and contributed to the formation of the management team (MT). Without cooperation, delegation and sharing responsibilities, successful portfolio entrepreneurship would not have been realized. However, the results suggest that learning from failure is dependent on the entrepreneur's personal background.

This study seeks to bring new insight to portfolio entrepreneurship by concentrating on the entrepreneurial career of a well‐known Finnish entrepreneur by following the framework of Politis. In this case, a MT in each firm enabled effective control and management of the current firm portfolio. The study shows that in addition to the entrepreneurial team, the management teams can also have a significant role in the context of portfolio entrepreneurship although they have largely been ignored.

This paper aims to focus on the role of team and entrepreneurial experience for firm performance of serial entrepreneurs in the multi‐media industry.

The research assumes that serial entrepreneurs have certain advantages over novice entrepreneurs, such as the development of effective start‐up teams and entrepreneurial experience effects. Disadvantages, however, are also mentioned in the literature, and these are assumed to out‐balance the advantages, leading to mixed research findings. The hypotheses are tested on a sample of 52 European multimedia companies.

The results show a positive impact of relevant entrepreneurial experience and evidence both team advantages as well as disadvantages. Team diversity had a positive impact on performance while the extent of repeated partnerships (or relative team stability) had a negative impact on performance. Moreover, entrepreneurial experience helps to build better diverse teams but has no impact on repeated partnerships.

The degree of experience of serial entrepreneurs in the same industry matters, and suggests that more experience is better. The findings challenge a general assumption about serial entrepreneurs: that the building of superior teams creates performance differences. Team diversity drives performance and the study could also show that habitual entrepreneurs are better in building diverse teams (through a positive moderation of team diversity by entrepreneurial experience). However, relying heavily on previous partners is counter‐productive. Limitations of this study are due to self‐reported data, small sample size and survivor bias.

Entrepreneurs need to focus on opportunities and resource needs linked to these opportunities, and use their experience to build stronger teams but to resist the temptation of replicating perceived past success formula by over‐relying on previous partners. The latter is also important for stakeholders in the entrepreneurial venture.

This paper tests various assumptions and propositions about serial entrepreneurship that are rarely based on sound evidence. The role of entrepreneurial experience to build better diverse teams and the role of repeated partnerships constitute an original contribution to habitual entrepreneurship research.

In spite of research on entrepreneurial intentions being a mature field of enquiry, little is known about the influence of experience on entrepreneurial intentions, especially among the youth and in developing contexts. This paper aims to investigate the impact of different types of experience – entrepreneurial early childhood experiences, prior start-up experiences, work experience, education and peer influence – on the entrepreneurial intentions of South African youth.

First, a quantitative survey of 827 secondary students was administered, and the results were analysed by means of hierarchical logistic regression. Second, two focus groups were conducted with secondary students representing two distinct segments of South African society to shed light on some of the unique survey findings.

The results revealed that the experiences of having attempted to start a business and having previously worked in a business, as well as entrepreneurship education, have a positive influence on youth entrepreneurial intentions, while peers' entrepreneurial intentions exert a negative influence. Peer influence and contextual factors such as family and community support, which are catalytic in other parts of the world, appear to dampen youth entrepreneurial intentions because of fear of failure and fear of competition.

This paper examines the influence of a broader taxonomy of experience types on youth entrepreneurial intentions than found in previous studies. It highlights the unique role played by specific types of experience and points to the need to include extra-curricular entrepreneurial experiences in interventions aimed at fostering youth entrepreneurial intentions in developing nations.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the model that explains the new venture emergence in China by examining the effects of experience and innovativeness of entrepreneurial opportunities on the new venture emergence, as well as the moderating effect of munificence.

Based on the dynamic data from the Chinese Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (CPSED) where nascent entrepreneurs were randomly sampled and were followed for three years, this paper uses the COX proportional hazard model to answer the research questions.

Those who have successful entrepreneurial experience are able to more rapidly create new ventures, whereas the relevant industry experience and innovativeness of entrepreneurial opportunities have a negative effect on the new venture emergence. Moreover, munificence negatively moderates the effects of entrepreneurial experience and innovativeness of entrepreneurial opportunities on the new venture emergence.

This paper only measures whether entrepreneurs have relevant industry experience, and does not reflect on the different degrees of it. In addition, small time interval of dynamic follow-up survey may bias the results.

This paper revealed that not all kinds of experience promote the venture emergence, and a more innovative entrepreneurial opportunity is not always better. Entrepreneurs should accumulate experience and evaluate innovativeness of entrepreneurial opportunities rationally.

New venture emergence relies on the mutual influence of entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial opportunities and entrepreneurial environment. However, most studies explored the new venture emergence from a single perspective which led to a plethora of conflicting conclusions. This paper attempts to examine the effects of experience and innovativeness of entrepreneurial opportunities on the venture emergence, as well as the moderate effect of munificence.

This paper aims to explore how intra-industry entrepreneurial experience and failure entrepreneurial experience affect novelty-centered business model design in a new venture. Moreover, the authors also consider whether the contingent value of entrepreneurial experience may differ according to competitive intensity.

A survey via questionnaire was conducted with 290 entrepreneurs and top managers from Chinese new ventures that provided the research data. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the proposed theoretical hypotheses.

The empirical results indicate that intra-industry entrepreneurial experience has an inverted U-shaped effect on novelty-centered business model design, whereas failure entrepreneurial experience has a negative effect on novelty-centered business model design. Furthermore, the authors also find that competitive intensity weakens the inverted U-shaped effect of intra-industry entrepreneurial experience on novelty-centered business model design.

This study offers new insights into the effects of intra-industry entrepreneurial experience and failure entrepreneurial experience on novelty-centered business model design and provides useful suggestions for new ventures to promote business model design.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the institutions involved in providing experience to entrepreneurs in China and analyzed the types of experience they provide. Moreover, the abilities of related organizations to shape experience were analyzed.

By using a multiple case study method, this qualitative study examined various entrepreneurial experience providers (namely incubator, entrepreneurship training institution, franchise store, entrepreneurship training network, and family business experience transfer) to understand the experience types and their supplying competencies.

On the basis of the types of entrepreneurial experience and the criteria for entrepreneurial competency assessment, the study results showed that the primary providers in China are the Start Your Business (SYB) program, incubators, and family businesses. Furthermore, for-profit social training organizations provided less experience than did governmental or private ones. The five providers mainly provided “know-what” entrepreneurial experience. Among the providers, family businesses and SYB offered experience that was conducive to entrepreneurial learning.

Entrepreneurs are the subjects of entrepreneurship education, while this study mainly focused on analyzing the experience supplying competencies. Thus, future studies should explore the required abilities that are developed during entrepreneurship for various learners.

This study interpreted how to achieve Chinese mass entrepreneurship and innovation strategy in the context of the low development of entrepreneurship higher education. To improve their competencies in providing experience, providers must focus on developing proper curricula, effective transfer methods and teacher resources, and incorporating entrepreneurship education.

On the basis of social learning theory and human capital theory, this study developed a set of criteria for the assessment of the ability of entrepreneurial experience providers. This study analyzed how related institutions enhanced entrepreneurial experience, thereby expanding the relevant learning channels and providing options for entrepreneurs to accumulate experience in China.