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Prior research has theorised that entrepreneurs use deliberate practice (DP) in the start-up process to improve their competences and achieve new venture success. However, does DP truly lead to an increase in entrepreneurial expertise? This article advances the understanding of DP for entrepreneurship scholars by answering the following question: to what extent does DP influence the formation of entrepreneurial expertise amongst business founders?

The study employs a sample of founders of limited-liability firms. Data were collected mainly through a web-based survey designed specifically for this research. Regression analysis was used to investigate the relationship between DP and entrepreneurial expertise amongst business founders.

The results show that DP is positively associated with entrepreneurial expertise, which provides us with an improved understanding of DP and expertise in the entrepreneurship context.

The article offers empirical evidence linking DP to the achievement of entrepreneurial expertise. Further, the article emphasises DP as key to experiential learning, representing a predominant mode by which entrepreneurs’ experiences are transformed into expertise. Finally, the article highlights the important role of learning through DP in opportunity development.

Wage employees enter self-employment either directly or in a staged manner and may subsequently undertake multiple stints at self-employment. Extant research on the relationship between entry modes and the persistence and outcomes of self-employment is inconclusive. This study investigates the relationship between wage employees’ initial mode of entry into self-employment and the duration of the subsequent first two stints of self-employment.

This study used a matched longitudinal sample of 9,550 employees who became majority owners of incorporated firms from 2005 to 2016.

The findings demonstrate that the initial mode of entry into self-employment matters for the first two stints at self-employment. Staged entry into self-employment was associated with a shorter first stint and became insignificant for the second stint. Staged entry into self-employment was positively related to the odds of becoming self-employed for the second time in the same firm.

Using a comprehensive and reliable dataset, the paper shifts focus from the aggregated onward journey of novice entrepreneurs (survival as the outcome) to the duration of their self-employment stints. By doing so, the paper offers insights into the process of becoming self-employed and the patterns associated with success/failure in entrepreneurship associated with self-employment duration.

Despite an increasing number of publications focusing on the phenomenon of entrepreneurial learning, it is still unclear how this learning process differs from wider organizational learning. This paper aims to address this gap by highlighting four key processual dimensions unique to entrepreneurial learning: intuiting, scanning, internalizing and routinizing.

Drawing on various conceptual and empirical papers published in this area over the past 20 years, common threads in the literature are identified, which point towards these four key dimensions of entrepreneurial learning.

It is thus argued that the ability of the entrepreneurial team to learn form and adapt to changes in the external market involves all four dimensions of intuiting, scanning, internalizing and routinizing. Intuiting involves drawing on prior knowledge to create new opportunity sets, and skills. These ideas and skills are then tested in the market, through scanning and market research. Internalizing allows the entrepreneurial team to question taken for granted assumptions, as existing ways of working and views of the world are continually adapted. Finally, routinization is the process whereby the entrepreneurial team accumulates a situated knowledge of the changing world around them, and in the process, frees up valuable cognitive resources, needed in the continual process of intuiting, scanning and internalizing.

It is argued that the adaptability of entrepreneurial ventures hinges on all four processual dimensions.