Educating Entrepreneurship Students About Emotion and Learning From Failure

Abstract

As theory develops and increases our understanding of the role of emotion in learning from failure, entrepreneurship educators have the opportunity to reflect these advancements in their pedagogies. This requires a focus on how students "feel" rather than on how, or what, they "think." I offer suggested changes to pedagogy to help students manage the emotions of learning from failure and discuss some of the challenges associated with measuring the implications of these proposed changes. I then expand my scope to explore possibilities of educating students on how to manage their emotions to avoid failure and, more generally, improve their emotional intelligence and for organizations to improve their ability to help individuals regulate their emotions. Entrepreneurship theory focuses on how to create and grow businesses through the discovery and exploitation of opportunities to bring into existence future goods and services (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000;Venkataraman, 1997) as well as how to avoid failure (McGrath, 1999).1 Entrepreneurship scholars acknowledge that not all attempts to launch and grow a business are successful, but even when failure occurs the entrepreneur has an opportunity to learn from the experience, and thereby improve his or her chance of success in the next entrepreneurial endeavor (Minniti & Bygrave, 2001).The above concepts are reflected in the following textbook quotes: "Businesses fail, but entrepreneurs do not. Failure is often the fire that tempers the steel of an entrepreneur's learning and street savvy" (Timmons, 1999: 47). "In order to succeed one first has to experience failure. It is a common pattern that the first venture fails, yet the entrepreneur learns and goes on to create a highly successful company" (Timmons, 1999: 30). However, this process of learning from failure can be emotionally difficult. Hisrich and Peters (2001) offer advice on how the entrepreneur can "deal with" business failure:First and foremost, the entrepreneur should consult with his or her family. . . . This discussion will also help alleviate some of the stress of dealing with bankruptcy. Second, the entrepreneur should seek outside assistance from professionals, friends, and business associates. . . . Third, it is important to not try to hang on to a venture that will continually drain resources if the end is inevitable. . . . The time spent could be more effectively used to either start over or do something else (pp. 595-596).These textbook excerpts suggest a number of important points.2 First, failure is an important source of learning for entrepreneurs. Second, bankruptcy is a difficult and stressful event for the entrepreneur and his or her family. This implies that business failure can generate a negative emotional reaction. Third, entrepreneurs are advised to seek outside assistance, primarily for sympathy and emotional support. Such advice implies that 1 McGrath (1999) argues that there is a tendancy to view failure negatively, which introduces a pervasive bias in entrepreneurship theory and research...

Getting Entrepreneurship Education Out of the Classroom and into Students’ Heads

“…The quizzes themselves did not include an experiential component. However, the quizzes include questions relating to guest speakers, through which the students received "indirect experience" (Shepherd 2004), thus incorporating previous experiential learning moments.…”

“…Using the above course design and assignments, students are provided three levels of experiential learning opportunities: indirect, virtual, and direct (see also Shepherd, 2004 for his lists of indirect and direct experiences). Firstly, they receive indirect experience via the guest speakers in the course, and from engaging with their team mentors.…”

A Missing Link on Entrepreneurship Education Curricula

“…There were some resources which provided guidance for curriculum development related to overcoming the shame, such as Shepherd who studied educating entrepreneurship students about emotion and learning from failure [14], and Munshi who talked about surviving failure, overcoming internal factors, handling current failure, and learning from failure [15]. While Young investigated Facing Shame and Self-blame after Trauma [16], Shelton explored about the Sword of Trauma, how to remove the sword, healing the wound, and using our sword [17].…”

Lessons learned from an inside-out flip in entrepreneurship education

“…Each of these interactions with industry provides a more realistic experiential learning opportunity than in the conventional flipped classroom. The degree to which the students are immersed into the experience of being an entrepreneur varies from indirect and virtual to direct (Shepherd 2004;Bliemel 2014). Indirect experience is the experience gained by learning about entrepreneurship from guest talks.…”

“…Learning from guests in the course constitutes one form of indirect experiential learning (Shepherd 2004;Bliemel 2014), because they are learning about entrepreneurship from someone else's direct experience.…”