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This chapter investigates the ways in which transnational practices of Chinese migrants can contribute to our understanding of how migration and entrepreneurship operate in superdiverse urban settings. ‘Superdiversity’, as outlined by Vertovec (2007), draws attention to the new and complex social formations, characterised by a dynamic integration of variables (e.g. race, ethnicity and social class) in European cosmopolitan cities. Increased diversity has created a complex range of under-explored challenges to immigrant entrepreneurs, who work within and, most importantly, for such communities. Importantly, for migrant groups in the current climate of austerity, enterprise may be a way of promoting employment and local development, while also kick-starting broader business regeneration. The focus of the chapter is based on the transnational practices of immigrant enterprises through the intersectionality of gender and ethnicity. The study focusses on Chinese entrepreneurial owners of small transnational enterprises (STEs) living in Birmingham, UK. Despite the fact that the Chinese STEs have been documented elsewhere including Canada (e.g. Wong & Ng, 2002), the USA (e.g. Sequeira, Carr, & Rasheed, 2009; You & Zhou, 2018), Australia (Wang & Warn, 2018) and some South-east Asian countries including China (Tan, 2006; Weng, 2014), very little empirical research has been conducted in the UK to document and explore the existence and characteristics of the Chinese STEs. Timely empirical studies are called for which illuminate the contemporary development and dynamics of the businesses run by the new Chinese immigrants in the west Midlands UK.

We theorize the critical role of angel investors' affective experiences and first impressions in the context of entrepreneurial finance. We develop a model and propositions to illustrate why angel investors make the decision to continue screening, thus explaining why certain investment proposals make it, while others do not.

Drawing on affective events theory and the literature on affective experiences, we theorize how the perceptions of pitches that trigger positive or/and negative physiological arousal, short-lived emotions, and associated thoughts are different, thus allowing us to build new theory of how these different experiences can influence the outcome of the evaluation process in the initial screening stage.

Our model suggests that the initial evaluation unfolds in five stages: perception of an entrepreneurial pitch, physiological arousal, emotions, first impression, and a decision to continue screening. When different manifestations of physiological arousal and subsequent emotions set the tone of first impressions, they can be either a positive, negative, or mixed experience. While positive and mixed first impression can lead to selection, negative first impression can lead to rejection.

We illustrate what is of value for angel investors when they look for new investments, and why certain entrepreneurial pitches lead to the decision to continue screening, while others do not. We propose that what angel investors feel is particularly important in situations where they are not yet making the ultimate decision to invest money but are involved in decisions about whether to continue to spend time to investigate the investment proposal.

Despite recognition of the centrality of emotions in entrepreneurship, little attention has been given to role of emotions in the development of entrepreneurial identity or enactment of entrepreneurial role. The contribution of the chapter is in the development of a dynamic model of the process leading to identification or dis-identification as an entrepreneur. In this chapter, we develop a dynamic model of the process leading to identification or dis-identification as an entrepreneur. We theorize that the driver behind an individual’s decision to become an entrepreneur, and their significant emotional experiences in the entrepreneurial role, influence the likelihood of following an identification or dis-identification cycle. Specifically, our framework proposes that positive emotions strengthen approach motivation and identification with the role, while negative ones foster avoidance motivation and dis-identification. We argue that contextual embeddedness can prompt transition between these two cycles. Our theorization provides new insights into methods of analyzing the role of emotions in the entrepreneurial process, more specifically in the process of entrepreneurial identity crafting. These insights also can be translated into studying the crafting of any professional identity.

Entrepreneurial activity is particularly rich in affective events, but these affective events are still underexplored compared to salaried work. Nevertheless, in small organizations, the running of the whole business may easily be impacted by the owner’s negative experiences.

To characterize these emotional lows, we undertook a mixed methods research study using a panel of 357 French small business owners. We collected their monthly work events 10 times and semantically categorized the negative ones. We weighted each category on its probability of occurrence and its emotional intensity of stress. Finally, we assessed the contribution of the cumulated events to the risk of burnout.

The findings of this study comprise a set of affective event categories applicable to business owners and entrepreneurs. Tables are ranked by times cited and intensity. Results of a regression analysis show that intensity of negative events is related to burnout, especially for younger and female employers.

The findings of this study extend the affective events framework to self-employed, supply a rigorous and predictive inventory for future surveys

The results offer small business owners as well as carers an “emotional stressometer” to benchmark the aversive events of the entrepreneurial activity.

Employer burnout caused by the experience of negative affective events affects the lives of employers and can carry across to non-work life.

This is the first study to develop a comprehensive list of negative affective events specifically for small business owners and entrepreneurs, rather than salaried employees.

This research expands the scope of the exploitation/exploration literature which has generally embraced a firm-level perspective by showing the theoretical and practical relevance of this framework for the study of entrepreneurial behaviour from an individual-level perspective. The study exemplifies specific instances where explorative or exploitative aspects of behaviour are likely to be manifested as a response to specific types of shocks that precede and impact the decision to quit and start one’s own business. Different types of shocks or entrepreneurial events displace the individual from the inertia of existing behaviour and pave the way for the consideration of a new set of opportunities; a new set of opportunities where entrepreneurial initiatives are perceived to be both feasible and desirable (exploitation–exploitation). Drawing upon 80 semi-structured and longitudinal interviews with entrepreneurs who quitted their ‘salaried job’ in order to start their own business, the study: (a) provides an inventory of events/shocks found to precipitate the interviewees’ decision to quit, and (b) links the various types of shocks with the prospective explorative and/or exploitative entrepreneurial initiatives. In this respect, the dynamics that underlie the effects of shocks on entrepreneurial behaviour are illustrated, while blurriness and interrelatedness of exploitative and explorative aspects of entrepreneurial behaviour are exemplified. Such a detailed list of shocks may serve as reference tool for both prospective entrepreneurs who wish to make an entrepreneurial shift in their career, as well as managers who wish to be proactive in avoiding or encouraging entrepreneurial employee turnover.

Student entrepreneurs account for a considerable number of start-up ventures derived from university settings. Nevertheless, there is little research that demonstrates how university entrepreneurship education (EE) directly influences students’ start-up activities. The primary purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of various types of university entrepreneurship activities (incorporate entrepreneurial courses, extra-curricular initiatives, and start-up support) on student start-up behavior. This quantitative research utilized questionnaire data collected from university students (n = 1,820) in southeast China and was analyzed with hierarchical Poisson regression in STATA procedures. Research results indicate that engaging in any type of university entrepreneurship activities positively predicts students’ start-up activities, yet this positive effect is contingent on students’ prior start-up experience and the overall university entrepreneurial climate. These findings advance our understanding of crucial elements within university entrepreneurial ecosystems and how various entrepreneurship activities within these ecosystems potentially impact students’ venture creation.

Overconfidence in one’s entrepreneurial abilities is often assumed to motivate the behaviors of founders of high growth ventures. However, when founders encounter significant obstacles in the firm growth process, some begin to doubt their efficacy of their abilities to manage these growth processes successfully. In these circumstances, prior research suggests that such self-doubt creates significant cognitive constraints on an entrepreneur’s growth ambitions. Similar to other types of resource constraints, cognitive constraints are thought to impact firm performance outcomes negatively. Despite these claims, in this study, phenomenological analysis of the experiences of a group of entrepreneurs creating and managing high-growth ventures based largely in Silicon Valley suggests that a number of these entrepreneurs experience significant levels of self-doubt but still persist in growing their ventures. Yet current entrepreneurship theory provides limited guidance regarding how entrepreneurs overcome these self-doubts and persist in creating a new venture. To address these theoretical limitations, in this chapter, we examine the cognitive process through which entrepreneurs wrestle with self-doubt in order to overcome self-imposed, cognitive constraints on firm growth. Based on this analysis, we develop a process model using a unique sample of interviews with 27 high-tech, high-growth entrepreneurs who have received venture capital funding. This model suggests entrepreneurs overcome self-doubt by managing the emotional impact derived from the discrepancy between their ideal and actual selves. Furthermore, entrepreneurs engage in an active process of transforming negative mental states by leveraging their intentionality, engaging in forethought, taking consistent action, and relying on the support of others. Overall, we find that entrepreneurs display a high level of entrepreneurial agency when attempting to transform negative mental states in order to persist with their ventures. Implications of these findings for cognitive theories of entrepreneurial action are discussed.

Evidence suggests habitual entrepreneurs (i.e. those with prior business ownership experience) are a widespread phenomenon. Appreciation of the existence of multiple entrepreneurial acts gives rise to the need to examine differences between habitual and novice entrepreneurs (i.e. those with no prior business experience as a founder, inheritor or purchaser of a business). This paper synthesizes human capital and cognitive perspectives to highlight behavioral differences between habitual and novice entrepreneurs. Issues relating to opportunity identification and information search, opportunity exploitation and learning are discussed. Avenues for future research are highlighted.

Why is the quality of innovation-driven entrepreneurship seemingly declining? We argue the growing Entrepreneurship Industry and the way it has transformed entrepreneurship as an activity are important, under-appreciated explanations. By leveraging the Ideology of Entrepreneurialism to mass-produce and mass-market products, the Entrepreneurship Industry has made possible what we term Veblenian Entrepreneurship. This is entrepreneurship pursued primarily as a form of conspicuous consumption, and it is fundamentally different from the innovation-driven entrepreneurship that it emulates and superficially resembles. Aside from lowering average entrepreneurial quality, Veblenian Entrepreneurship has a range of (short-run) positive and (medium- and long-run) negative effects for both individuals and society at large. We argue that the rise of the Veblenian Entrepreneur might contribute to creating an increasingly Untrepreneurial Economy. An Untrepreneurial Economy appears innovation-driven and dynamic but is actually rife with inefficiencies and unable to generate economically meaningful growth through innovation.

The pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunities is not always successful. On the one hand, entrepreneurial failure offers an invaluable opportunity for entrepreneurs to learn about their ventures and themselves. On the other hand, entrepreneurial failure is associated with substantial financial, psychological, and social costs. When entrepreneurs fail to learn from failure, the potential value of this experience is not fully utilized and these costs will have been incurred in vain. In this chapter, the authors investigate how the stigma of failure exacerbates the various costs of failure, thereby making learning from failure much more difficult. The authors combine an analysis of interviews of 20 entrepreneurs (who had, at the time of interview, experienced failure) with an examination of archival data reflecting the legal and cultural environment around their ventures. The authors find that stigma worsens the entrepreneurs’ experience of failure, hinders their transformation of failure experience, and eventually prevents them from utilizing the lessons learnt from failure in their future entrepreneurial activities. The authors discuss the implications of the findings for the entrepreneurship research and economic policies.