Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual model that explains how learning processes at the team level connect with individual and organizational levels of learning in technology-based ventures, thereby influencing the evolution of innovation capabilities in the entrepreneurial process.

Design/methodology/approach: The 4I organizational learning framework is used as an overarching theoretical structure to acknowledge entrepreneurial learning as a dynamic process that operate on multiple levels in technology-based ventures. Embedded in this logic, research on team learning is integrated into this theorizing to examine how learning processes at the team level bridge and connect with learning processes operating at individual and organizational levels.

Findings: The conceptual model identifies different sets of team learning processes critical for the routinization and evolution of innovation capabilities in technology-based ventures. In this respect, the conceptual model advances the scholarly understanding of entrepreneurial learning as a dynamic process operating across multiple levels in technology-based ventures.

Originality/value: By conceptualizing how individual streams of experiences over time become institutionalized via interaction, conversation and dialogue, the paper provides novel insights into the critical role of team learning for bridging individual and organizational levels of learning in the entrepreneurial learning process. © 2017, © Emerald Publishing Limited.

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to describe the basic characteristics and qualities of managerial work in small firms.

Design/methodology/approach: The article draws on a summary and synthesis of five studies from the “managerial-work research tradition” that investigates the behaviour of top managers in small firms by means of direct observation. Studies are evaluated by using research on managers' jobs in general, and some needs as well as guidelines for future research on entrepreneurial and managerial work in small firms are suggested.

Findings: Managerial work in small firms is described by discussing: how managers divide their time between different activities; managerial interaction and communication, and the elements of managerial work in small firms. Three limitations of existing studies are identified: they are difficult to compare; they adopt a simplistic conception of the constituents of managers' jobs, and more specifically of the relation between the managing actor and the context in which he/she works; and they fail to recognise to the value of inductive analysis.

Research limitations/implications: Future studies of managerial work in small firms have much to gain by considering the development that has been taking place within general management theory and in the study of managers' jobs. This article contributes a first step towards bringing research on managers' jobs into the small-business research community.

Originality/value: The paper initiates a better understanding of the basics of managerial work in small firms, which has not previously been elaborated upon and is an important step in exploring the dynamics of small business management.

Purpose – This paper seeks to develop an integrated framework to examine how entrepreneurs' work experience is associated with the generation of new business ideas. The framework combines human capital theory with theory and research on entrepreneurial learning.

Design/methodology/approach – A statistical analysis on a sample of 291 Swedish entrepreneurs is conducted.

Findings – The paper finds that a learning mind-set that favors exploration is the strongest predictor of the generation of new business ideas. It also finds that breadth in functional work experience seems to favor the generation of new business ideas while deep industry work experience is negatively related to new business idea generation. In addition, the paper finds indications that a learning mind-set that favors exploration is required to more fully benefit from investments in human capital.

Research limitations/implications – The study's findings add to knowledge of how investments in human capital via work experience, and the employment of a learning mindset that favors exploration, influence performance outcomes in the early stages of the entrepreneurial process.

Practical implications – The study's findings suggest that entrepreneurs should develop and nurture a learning mind-set that favors exploration as this will increase their ability to generate more new business ideas. Moreover, movements across different functional work areas appear to have great potential as sources of ideas for new products and markets.

Originality/value – Prior empirical studies have not taken individual learning preferences among entrepreneurs into account. Nor have they explicitly tested the effect of depth versus breadth in work experience. The paper thus provides novel insights with respect to how these factors interact in the process of generating new business ideas. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to create a better understanding of how entrepreneurial education research has evolved with regard to pedagogy over the past decades. Design/methodology/approach: The authors employed systematic review methodology to enable an in-depth analysis of the literature in a process that was both replicable and transparent. Guided by the research purpose, the systematic review of 395 articles published between January 1980 and December 2018 was influenced by a configurative approach aimed at interpreting and understanding the phenomenon under study. Findings: The analysis suggests that the scholarly discourse on pedagogy in entrepreneurial education research has developed over time from teacher-guided instructional models to more constructivist perspectives. A shift in the literature was also observed, where scholarly discussions moved from addressing the issue of teachability to a greater emphasis on learnability. Contemporary discussions centre on the theoretical and philosophical foundations of experience-based teaching and learning. Originality/value: The study illustrates how entrepreneurial education has evolved into a distinct research theme, characterized by a practice-oriented research agenda that emphasizes the need to connect teaching to “real-world” environments. The practice-oriented agenda has led to continued societal interest in promoting entrepreneurial education, while at the same time creating low academic legitimacy. © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Purpose: This study focuses on extra-curricular start-up programs for students at higher educational institutions. It explores the social and situated learning experiences of students who participate in start-up programs, as well as how the processes and outcomes of entrepreneurial learning are potentially shaped by this context.

Design/methodology/approach: The study follows multiple cohorts of students who have participated in an extra-curricular start-up program managed by three collaborating universities in Greater Copenhagen. The data have been inductively analyzed using semi-structured interviews with students and project managers during and after the start-up program, complemented with project progress reports, observation notes and survey data.

Findings: The analysis generates a grounded, theoretically informed process model of entrepreneurial learning situated in extra-curricular start-up programs. The model depicts how the immersion, comprehension and co-participation in entrepreneurship as social practice subsequently enables students to expand knowledge structures and develop greater self-confidence in performing entrepreneurship. The model identifies three interconnected components that trigger entrepreneurial learning among students, which allow them to acquire two set of competencies: venture creation competencies and enterprising competencies.

Originality/value: The findings offer unique insights into how the social and relational environment influence and shape the learning experience of students, hence filling the research void on entrepreneurial learning in the situated context of extra-curricular enterprise activities. The findings also elucidate how individual learning experiences of students are potentially shaped by the immersion, comprehension and co-participation in entrepreneurship as social practice. © 2021, Jasna Pocek, Diamanto Politis and Jonas Gabrielsson

Purpose: In this study, the authors develop knowledge and insights on how the perception of interestingness influences the structure and focus of conversations in entrepreneurial education (EE) research. In particular, the authors elaborate on what is perceived as interesting among different subgroups of EE researchers, and not least, how EE researchers can identify and engage in scholarly conversation within the field. Design/methodology/approach: The study is based on a unique database with web-based responses from 465 EE researchers from around the world. The authors conduct analyses of both open-ended and closed questions. The open-ended questions are analyzed by inductive categorization. The closed questions are subject to factor and cluster analyses. Findings: The findings suggest that EE research is a topic-oriented field, characterized by a strong focus on novel and challenging research issues. In addition, the field is individualistic and fragmented, and the perception of interestingness differs between five subgroups of EE researchers, whose members have a somewhat different perception of interestingness. Accordingly, the authors also find different core conversations going on within the field. Obviously, these conversations tend to be triggered by the field's obsession with novelty and challenging research, but several conversations are related to practically relevant research, as well as methodological and theoretical discussions. Originality/value: This is the first study to elaborate on the perception of interestingness among EE researchers and the conversations going on within the field. In the study the authors have explored the characteristics of EE research based on the perception of interestingness among the researchers within the field. In this respect, this study contributes insights on how current and aspiring EE researchers can find and build scholarly conversations embedded in passionate interest, while concurrently disseminating and accumulating knowledge on EE together with like-minded peers. © 2022, Hans Landström, Jonas Gabrielsson, Diamanto Politis and Roger Sørheim.

Purpose: The demand for healthcare innovation is increasing, and not much is known about how entrepreneurial firms search for and sell to customers in the highly regulated and complex healthcare market. Drawing on effectuation perspectives, we explore how entrepreneurial digital healthcare firms with disruptive innovations search for early customers in the healthcare sector. Design/methodology/approach: This study uses a qualitative, longitudinal multiple-case design of four entrepreneurial Nordic telehealth firms. In-depth interviews were conducted with founders and senior managers over a period of 27 months. Findings: We find that when customer buying conditions are highly flexible, case firms use effectual logic to generate customer demand for disruptive innovations. However, under constrained buying conditions firms adopt a more causal approach to customer search. Practical implications: Managers need to gain a deep understanding of target buying environments when searching for customers. In healthcare sector markets, the degree of flexibility customers have over buying can constrain them from engaging in demand co-creation. In particular, healthcare customer access to funding streams can be a key determinant of customer flexibility. Originality/value: We contribute to effectuation literature by illustrating how customer buying conditions influence decision-making logics of entrepreneurial firms searching for customers in the healthcare sector. We contribute to entrepreneurial resource search literature by illustrating how entrepreneurial firms search for customers beyond their networks in the institutionally complex healthcare sector. © 2024, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Purpose

– This paper employs theories of experiential learning to examine why some entrepreneurs have developed a more positive attitude towards failures compared to others.Design/methodology/approach – The paper conducts statistical analysis on a sample of 231 Swedish entrepreneurs that have started new independent firms in 2004.

Findings

– The empirical findings support the guiding proposition that more favourable attitudes towards failure could be learned through entrepreneurs' life and work. The results suggest that previous start up experience is strongly associated with a more positive attitude towards failure. The paper also finds that experience from closing down a business is associated with a more positive attitude towards failure. In addition, a more fine‐grained analysis suggests that experience from closing down a business due to reasons of poor performance is a highly valuable source of learning while closure due to more personal reasons does not lead to the same result.

Research limitations/implications

– In sum, the findings add to the knowledge of why some entrepreneurs have a more positive attitude towards failure compared to others. It also provides some general implications for the understanding of entrepreneurial learning as an experiential process.

Practical implications

– A positive attitude toward failure might be a significant asset for entrepreneurs as it might help them to deal with and learn from their mistakes and to move forward. The results indicate that the attitudes toward failure are not homogeneous among entrepreneurs. Rather, this attitude can, at least to some degree, be influenced due to new experiences and new information.

Originality/value

– The paper provides novel insights with regard to the role that critical career experiences can play for the development of entrepreneurs' attitudes towards failure. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Purpose – The aim of this study is to test the assumption that ability to handle communication and iability of newness (LoN) is enhanced by academic entrepreneurship education and/or previous start-upexperience.

Design/methodology/approach – The data collection includes a questionnaire with a total sample of 392 responding entrepreneurs in Sweden. Statistical analyses are made between entrepreneurs with academic entrepreneurship education respectively previous start-up experience. Findings – The findings show that entrepreneurs with experience from entrepreneurship education report more developed communicative skills in the dimensions of openness as well as adaptation, whereas the dimension of other-orientation is found to be learned by previous start-up experience. When it comes to perceived problems related to LoN the differences between the groups were not as strong as assumed. However, the differences observed imply that also for handling LoN the authors identify a combined effect of possessing start-up experience as well as experience from entrepreneurship education. Consequently, entrepreneurs with experience from both, show in total the most elaborated skills.

Practical implications – One way to improve future entrepreneurship educations is to make students more aware of the mutual profit in a business agreement and how to communicate this in a marketing situation. Another suggestion is to include starting business as a course work.

Originality/value – This study not only meets the call for actual outcome from entrepreneurship educations in terms of changed behaviour but also for interdisciplinary research in the entrepreneurship field in integrating leadership research with focus on communication.