Business failure represents a significant outcome of entrepreneurial activity and yet remains an underdeveloped area of research. This article focuses on the attitudes of VC investors towards entrepreneurs with a previous failure experience. It illustrates that VCs recognise the complex, contextual nature of failure and do not necessarily perceive the entrepreneur to be the primary cause of the venture's demise. Consequently, the article differentiates between 'business', 'entrepreneurial' and 'venture capitalist' failure. The article demonstrates that VCs often adopt a tolerant, flexible and open-minded attitude to failure and are keen to understand the circumstances in which it occurred. The majority of the VCs in the study emphasise that their decision to invest in an entrepreneur is not negatively affected to any significant degree by a previous experience of failure. A number of influential factors are presented, such as a high quality concept, which can offset this aspect of the entrepreneur's track record. The article concludes that business failure is not automatically considered a 'black mark' by VCs. It is important for entrepreneurs involved in business failure to be aware of these positive and sympathetic attitudes when considering putting forward new proposals to the VC community.

Many governments are keen to see enhanced levels of enterprise and entrepreneurial activity and have encouraged the higher education sector to increase the amount of enterprise education provided to students, particularly in science, engineering and technology disciplines, to prepare them for careers that advance innovation. Whilst university students derive much education and learning from within their principal discipline, significant learning occurs outside the classroom, at home, in social settings and in the workplace. This paper uses data on more than four hundred third and fourth year engineering undergraduates at four United Kingdom universities to explore the relative contribution of a range of experiences in the workplace which affect their venturing and technology self-efficacy. Experiences include different forms of workplace orientation, varying degrees of authenticity of the work they are given relative to their future careers, how students rank their performance and the presence of successful role models. Results show that authenticity, defined as a close relationship between the undergraduate's course of study, feedback on performance, and how well the students felt they had performed, are the dominant predictors of self-efficacy. The paper concludes with a discussion of the need for universities and companies to work together to pay greater attention to the quality of undergraduate placement experiences.

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