Dealing with Failure: Serial Entrepreneurs and the Costs of Changing Industries Between Ventures

Eggers, J. P.; Lin, Song

doi:10.5465/amj.2014.0050

Cited by 162 publications

(183 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…We find a similar argument around individuals using external attributions rather than changing their own behaviour among Chinese serial entrepreneurs (Eggers & Song, 2015).…”

Section: Motivation and The Case Of Non-learning: Is Motivation The Ksupporting

confidence: 48%

“…Analyzing these studies, we find that they describe situations with low motivation to learn (Baumold & Starbuck, 2005;Eggers & Song, 2015), limited opportunity to learn in combination with low motivation to solve underlying problems (Tucker & Edmondson, 2003) and potentially an inability to learn due to low motivation (Eggers & Song, 2015). A conclusion is that failure learning is difficult since is only likely to happen when all three mechanisms are sufficiently activated, and that motivation is a necessary condition for deliberate learning.…”

Section: Motivation and The Case Of Non-learning: Is Motivation The Kmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Opportunity, Motivation, and Ability to Learn from Failures and Errors: Review, Synthesis, and Ways to Move Forward

Dahlin

Chuang

Roulet

2018

ANNALS

196

106

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“…We find a similar argument around individuals using external attributions rather than changing their own behaviour among Chinese serial entrepreneurs (Eggers & Song, 2015).…”

Section: Motivation and The Case Of Non-learning: Is Motivation The Ksupporting

confidence: 48%

Section: Motivation and The Case Of Non-learning: Is Motivation The Kmentioning

confidence: 99%

Opportunity, Motivation, and Ability to Learn from Failures and Errors: Review, Synthesis, and Ways to Move Forward

Dahlin

Chuang

Roulet

2018

ANNALS

196

106

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Their findings led some scholars to question if it failure learning is generally to be expected at all (Baumold & Starbuck, 2005). Analyzing these studies, we find that they describe situations with low motivation to learn (Baumold & Starbuck, 2005;Eggers & Song, 2015), limited opportunity to learn in combination with low motivation to solve underlying problems (Tucker & Edmondson, 2003) and potentially an inability to learn due to low motivation (Eggers & Song, 2015). A conclusion is that failure learning is difficult since is only likely to happen when all three mechanisms are sufficiently activated, and that motivation is a necessary condition for deliberate learning.…”

Section: Motivation To Learn From Failurementioning

confidence: 99%

Opportunity, Motivation, and Ability to Learn from Failures and Errors: Review, Synthesis, and Ways to Move Forward

Dahlin

Chuang

Roulet

2018

Preprint

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While organizations and individuals tend to focus on learning from success, research has shown that failure can yield crucial insights in various contexts that range from small mistakes and errors, product recalls, accidents, and medical errors, to large-scale disasters.This review of the literature identifies three mechanisms-opportunity, motivation, and ability-through which individuals, groups and organizations learn from failure, and it bridges the gaps between different levels of analysis. Opportunity to learn from failure mostly takes the shape of more information about errors and failures that are generated by one's own and others' prior failures or near-failures. Motivation to learn from failure is hindered by punitive leaders and organizations. Finally, ability to learn from failure partly relies on inherent attitudes and characteristics; but can be further developed through thoughtful analysis and transfers of successful routines. Our review leads us to distinguish between erroneous versus correct processes and adverse versus successful outcomes to better understand the full gamut of events that are faced by organizations. We identify the existence of noisy learning environment, where spurious successes (when erroneous processes still lead 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 2 to successful outcomes) and spurious failures (when correct processes are combined with adverse outcomes) lower the opportunity to learn. Considering noisy learning situations is helpful when understanding the differences between slow-and fast-learning environments.We conclude our review by identifying a number of unexplored areas we hope scholars will address to better our understanding of failure learning.

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“…Serial entrepreneurship is a common phenomenon, and one of interest to scholars (Eggers and Song 2015, MacMillan 1986, Paik 2014. Serial entrepreneurship is an important form of persistence -the launching of a new venture after the conclusion of a prior one (Gompers et al 2006).…”

Section: Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the other hand, the higher the degree of success, the more past performance suggests that a second founding attempt is likely to succeed. While the degree to which founders learn from prior attempts depends on the similarity of context (Eggers and Song 2015), there is some degree of consistency in the fact that all attempts are on the same crowdfunding platform.…”

Section: Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Second Thoughts About Second Acts: Gender Differences in Serial Founding Rates

Kuppuswamy

Mollick

2016

SSRN Journal

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Men are far more likely to start new ventures than women. We argue that one explanation of this gap is that women respond differently to signals of past entrepreneurial success due to the "male hubris, female humility" effect. We argue that as a result women are disproportionately less likely to persist in second founding attempts than men when they have succeeded or failed by large margins. Using a data set of serial founders in crowdfunding, we find evidence supporting this prediction. We then turn to a unique survey of founders in crowdfunding in order to examine alternative explanations. We find support for a variety of systematic differences between male and female founders, but the persistence effect remains. While decreased persistence in the face of low quality opportunities benefits women individually, we argue that it disadvantages women as a group, as it leads to 25.3% fewer female-led foundings in our sample than would have occurred if women reacted similarly to men. Abstract: Men are far more likely to start new ventures than women. We argue that one explanation of this gap is that women respond differently to signals of past entrepreneurial success due to the "male hubris, female humility" effect. We argue that as a result women are disproportionately less likely to persist in second founding attempts than men when they have succeeded or failed by large margins. Using a data set of serial founders in crowdfunding, we find evidence supporting this prediction. We then turn to a unique survey of founders in crowdfunding in order to examine alternative explanations. We find support for a variety of systematic differences between male and female founders, but the persistence effect remains. While decreased persistence in the face of low quality opportunities benefits women individually, we argue that it disadvantages women as a group, as it leads to 25.3% fewer female-led foundings in our sample than would have occurred if women reacted similarly to men. * Authorship is alphabetical; both authors contributed equally in developing this paper. The authors would like to thank Adam Cox, Disciplines Management Sciences and Quantitative Methods

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Dealing with Failure: Serial Entrepreneurs and the Costs of Changing Industries Between Ventures

Cited by 162 publications

References 57 publications

Opportunity, Motivation, and Ability to Learn from Failures and Errors: Review, Synthesis, and Ways to Move Forward

Opportunity, Motivation, and Ability to Learn from Failures and Errors: Review, Synthesis, and Ways to Move Forward

Opportunity, Motivation, and Ability to Learn from Failures and Errors: Review, Synthesis, and Ways to Move Forward

Second Thoughts About Second Acts: Gender Differences in Serial Founding Rates

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