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Insights on the mentorship and coachability of entrepreneurs

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Abstract

Mentorship from other experienced individuals has become essential to entrepreneurs and their fledgling ventures, particularly in today’s accelerators. However, even with the acknowledgment that mentoring and coaching improve an entrepreneur’s likelihood of success, we know very little about the nuances of mentor-mentee relationships or the individual characteristics important to an entrepreneur’s coachability. Therefore, we examined mentors and founders across entrepreneurial support organizations to investigate the factors that influence an entrepreneur’s coachability, how coachability translates to venture outcomes, and whether or not the mentor-mentee relationship met the entrepreneur’s expectations. We found that entrepreneurs that are more coachable are ultimately more successful during their time in these programs and are more satisfied with their mentorship experience. This article provides insights for the leaders of accelerators to improve mentorship opportunities and suggestions for entrepreneurs to improve their coachability.

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... Entrepreneur coaching, widely leveraged across venture acceleration programs, helps entrepreneurs direct action and develop knowledge to navigate the journey ahead (Kuratko et al., 2017(Kuratko et al., , 2021. Entrepreneur coaching-defined as a one-to-one, customtailored learning intervention, between an entrepreneur and a coach-involves a collaborative and goal-focused relationship to benefit the entrepreneur (Audet & Couteret, 2012;de Haan & Nilsson, 2023;Mansoori et al., 2019). ...
... Entrepreneur coaching involves the pairing of an aspiring entrepreneur with an experienced business coach, who provides advice and ways of thinking to help avoid costly or even fatal mistakes (St-Jean & Audet, 2012;St-Jean & Tremblay, 2020). Although entrepreneur coaching is increasingly common (Kuratko et al., 2017(Kuratko et al., , 2021, extant research acknowledges entrepreneur coaching overlaps in conceptualization with other support scenarios such as entrepreneur mentoring, executive coaching, workplace coaching, and startup consultancy (e.g., Kutzhanova et al., 2009). Recent research by Kotte et al. (2021) delineates the conceptualization of entrepreneur coaching by noting it typically involves a coach who serves as both an expert consultant-possessing high knowledge in a specific domain-and a process consultant-enabling the entrepreneur to arrive at their own solutions by way of facilitating conversations and startup processes. ...
... Despite recurrent calls, limited empirical research on the coach-entrepreneur match and subsequent venture implications exists (Boyce et al., 2010;Marvel et al., 2020;Sanchez-Burks et al., 2017). We build from the coaching and entrepreneurial learning research to Audet & Couteret, 2012;Kotte et al., 2021;Mansoori et al., 2019) and investigations of entrepreneurs' capacity for coaching (e.g., Ciuchta et al., 2018;Kuratko et al., 2021). Second, we contribute an alternative perspective to the dominant view in coaching research and highlight the value of differences among the coach and the entrepreneur. ...
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Plain English Summary A proper match between a coach and a startup founder may be crucial for the process of learning from customers in the early stages of venture development. Because coaching is widely recognized as valuable guidance for entrepreneurs in venture acceleration programs, we investigated the coach-entrepreneur match in the context of new ventures as related to customer learning. We tested hypotheses derived from our theoretical model that links knowledge-based situations to entrepreneur customer involvement, which is then linked to product innovativeness. Overall, we demonstrate support for our hypotheses that the coach-entrepreneur match is important to spur learning actions for customer involvement which then mediates the relationship between knowledge-based situations and product innovativeness. The coaching literature generally supports the similarity between the coach and the coachee for fostering positive outcomes and establishing rapport; however, our findings indicate that similar matches in the level of customer knowledge limit the potential for customer involvement, indicating that contrasting knowledge perspectives are preferable for learning actions and product innovativeness.
... A pivotal driver in this endeavor hinges upon the mobilization of external support to tap into crucial knowledge, expertise, and financial resources, which are subsequently transformed into the innovation process (García-Sánchez et al., 2018;Kariv et al., 2022). This, in turn, necessitates the cultivation of relationships with a diverse spectrum of stakeholders, which can vary from harmonious collaborations to contentious interactions (Busch et al., 2018;Kuratko et al., 2021b). Grappling with the intricacies, entrepreneurs deploy various approaches in managing these relationships, contingent upon their assessment of the inherent opportunities and risks, a concept that is often referred to as bridging and buffering stakeholder relations (Bergman & McMullen, 2021;Ratinho et al., 2020). ...
... In contrast, bridging strategies focus on expanding external connections, transferring knowledge, and aligning with stakeholder expectations. These strategies foster open collaboration and knowledge sharing (Baker et al., 2016), and facilitate a more collaborative approach that supports the development of innovation (Elia et al., 2020;Krueger, 2020;Kuratko et al., 2021b). Individual stakeholders, such as family and trusted advisors, offer personalized support and trustbased relationships (Hanlon & Saunders, 2007;St-Jean & Audet, 2012), and these connections often extend beyond conventional stakeholder support, making entrepreneurs more inclined to opt for bridging strategies. ...
... Bridging and buffering strategies We developed our indexes from two questions, echoing association of bridging strategies to interactions with individual stakeholders (Kuratko et al., 2021b) and buffering strategies to institutional stakeholders (Mellahi et al., 2016;Scott & Davis, 2015). Respondents were asked to indicate what type of support/endowments they need in their efforts to innovate, from the following 2 : funds, technology expertise, professional expertise, mentorship, connections to investors, among others, framed as "What kind of support would you need to help you in your business activities in general?" ...
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Expanding upon Mansfield's framework (In: R&D, patents, and productivity. University of Chicago Press, pp 127–154, 1984; Am Econ Rev 78(2):223–228, 1988), this study seeks to unravel the foundational drivers influencing product and process innovation. Addressing the prevailing bias in research towards product innovation, tis study aims at highlighting the imperative role of process innovation in enhancing business competitiveness. In our study encompassing 509 entrepreneurs from Quebec, we used mixed methods to explore stakeholder relationship strategies—differentiated by bridging and buffering—and growth aspirations, as innovation drivers. Findings show that implementing bridging strategies, marked by expanded external connections and collaboration, stimulates both product and process innovation. However, the pursuit of process innovation concurrently attracts buffering strategies, entailing stringent secrecy and limited transparency to uphold the business independence. Our findings prove the business vulnerability when developing process innovation. Moreover, our study illuminates the pivotal role of growth aspirations in steering innovation, manifested in either collaborative (bridging) or protective (buffering) approaches, providing novel insights into the prevailing forces driving innovation. Our research contributes to current research by revealing the pivotal role of process innovation in shaping the innovation landscape. Elucidating innovation drivers enhances our understanding of the multifaceted dynamics fostering both product and process innovation, providing a framework for future investigations.
... Across start-up ecosystems, coachability is considered one of the most important entrepreneur attributes (Kleiman, 2020). Entrepreneur coaching programs are now a best practice in entrepreneurship support organizations, and start-up leaders need to understand the factors that lead to successful coaching (Kuratko et al., 2021). Ecosystem leaders have been encouraged to take a proactive approach in educating entrepreneurs on the importance of coachability and ways to demonstrate coachability before introducing them to potential investors or other stakeholders. ...
... Just as interest in coaching programs and entrepreneur coachability has increased, so has the diversity of entrepreneurship support organizations adopting coaching initiatives to assist entrepreneurs with venture development (Kuratko et al., 2021). Although the total amount of entrepreneur coaching taking place is difficult to estimate, a variety of initiatives populate start-up ecosystems. ...
... Recent scholarship has supported the notion that there are differences between men and women entrepreneurs in terms of their coachability. For example, in a sample of entrepreneurship support organizations across the United States, Kuratko et al. (2021) found that women entrepreneurs are considered more coachable than their male counterparts. In a related study comprised of multiple cohorts of entrepreneurs in the start-up accelerator context, Bryan et al. (2017) found that entrepreneur age was negatively associated with coachability, and they theorized that as age increases, so does entrepreneur stubbornness. ...
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Entrepreneur coachability is the degree to which an entrepreneur seeks, carefully considers, and integrates feedback to improve a venture’s performance. There is increasing evidence that entrepreneur coachability is important for attracting the social and financial resources necessary for venture growth. Although entrepreneur coachability has emerged as an especially relevant construct for practitioners, start-up ecosystem leaders, and scholars alike, research on this entrepreneurial behavior is in its infancy. What appears to be a consistent finding across studies is that some entrepreneurs are more coachable than others, which affects downstream outcomes—particularly resource acquisition. However, there are sizable theoretical and empirical gaps that limit our understanding about the value of coachability to entrepreneurship research. As a body of literature develops, it is useful to take inventory of the work that has been accomplished thus far and to build from the lessons learned to identify insightful new directions. The topic of entrepreneur coachability has interdisciplinary appeal, and there is a surge of entrepreneur coaching taking place across start-up ecosystems. Research on coaching is diverse, and scholarship has developed across the academic domains of athletics, marketing, workplace coaching, and entrepreneurship. To identify progress to date, promising research gaps, and paths for future exploration, the literature on entrepreneur coachability is critically reviewed. To consider the future development of entrepreneur coachability scholarship, a research agenda is organized by the antecedents of entrepreneurship coachability, outcomes of entrepreneur coachability, and how entrepreneur– coach fit affects learning and development. Future scholarship is needed to more fully explore the antecedents, mechanisms, and/or consequences of entrepreneur coachability. The pursuit and development of this research stream represent fertile ground for meaningful contributions to entrepreneurship theory and practice.
... On the other hand, the literature on mentoring has focused on the characteristics of the mentors (e.g., Bennetts, 2002;Clutterbuck, 2004), on mentoring programs (e.g., Sanchez-Burks et al., 2017), on the perceived benefits from the entrepreneurs' perspective (e.g., Brodie et al., 2017) and on the 'coachability' of entrepreneurs (e.g., Kuratko et al., 2021). However, the methodological and decisional aspects have been neglected, even though the decision-making support of mentors has been proved to be effective and to ideally translate into later entrepreneurial activities (Fischhoff, 1982;York & Danes, 2014). ...
... Among the latter, mentees have been investigated about the absorptive capacity of a start-up (Samaeemofrad & Van Den Herik, 2020), prior managerial experience (Blank, 2021), gender (Nicholls-Nixon & Maxheimer, 2022), and in relation to the chances of survival of a start-up (e.g., Blank, 2021). Moreover, some contributions have explored the mentor-mentee interaction mechanisms (e.g., Kuratko et al., 2021;Mansoori et al., 2019) and the perceived value of such a relationship, although only from the perspective of the entrepreneurs (Brodie et al., 2017;Vaz et al., 2022). ...
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Purpose Incubators have long been relevant actors in the development of start-ups. This paper proposes studying mentoring in incubators as a decision aiding process that aids a specific design process, namely the activities of a start-up during incubation. Design/methodology/approach Methodologically, this paper assumes a parallelism between mentoring and decision aiding, as well as between business modelling and a design process. According to this approach, mentors are viewed as decision aiding actors who operate within Contexts of Action and adopt more or less appropriate tools to aid business modelling design activities. A protocol analysis was carried out on 86 mentoring sessions with 53 entrepreneurial teams at the I3P Incubator of the Politecnico di Torino. Findings The study allowed us to obtain a deep understanding of the mentoring activities and the appropriateness of the tools used in each phase of the incubation process. Originality This paper introduces five elements of novelty. First, it looks at business mentoring as a decision aiding process of a design process, specifically the incubation process; second, this has allowed us to refer to a framework provided by the Decision Aiding literature; third, it adopts an alternative research approach to surveys, questionnaires and interviews; fourth, it provides an abstract/standardised unit of analysis to describe the situational nature of mentoring. Finally, it identifies the building blocks of mentoring and how the activities are methodologically conducted.
... You are guided in different aspects, such as formalizing your immigration status, homologation of academic degrees, and managing capitalization. In this phase, advice helps to eliminate barriers or obstacles to taking the first steps in entrepreneurship [115]. ...
... The entrepreneur can carry out this phase inside or outside the business incubator facilities but with the permanent support of technicians. In this phase, meetings between the entrepreneur and the team occur weekly and even daily [115]. The business incubator must provide materials, databases, and free training to complete this phase successfully [124]. ...
Article
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This research quantified the relationships among the different phases of the business incubation process. 89 surveys coming from business incubators in Spain in the period 2022–2023 have been collected. A structural equation model (SEM) was applied to determine the association among incubation phases 1, 2, 3, and 4. The results showed that the “spreading entrepreneurship” phase had a strongly positive significative influence on preincubation, phases 1 and 2 (hypothesis 1) basic incubation, phase 3 (hypothesis 4), and advanced incubation phase 4 (hypothesis 5). Besides, a moderate positive influence was found between preincubation and basic incubation (hypothesis 2) and between preincubation and advanced incubation (hypothesis 6). In this context, spreading entrepreneurship will be a useful tool to determine the success of entrepreneurship during the incubation process. Improving variables such as counseling, channels and training will positively impact incubation. Therefore, taking action at the spreading entrepreneurship stage to improve the business incubator results, and evaluate the structural deficiencies of entrepreneurs to improve their training level and technicians' specialization is recommended. Applying SEM models in business incubators to evaluate their influence on graduation rates would also be of great interest.
... In addition to formal training programs, the literature suggests that exposure to various operational facets of a business can contribute to the development of entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Immersive experiences allow individuals to gain insights into the dynamics, opportunities, and challenges associated with entrepreneurship (Kuratko, Neubert, and Marvel 2021). Krueger, Reilly, and Carsrud (2000) propose that hands-on experience significantly enhances the perceived viability and attractiveness of initiating a new venture. ...
... Studies conducted in various global contexts, from Nigeria (Adekiya and Ibrahim 2016) to Germany (Tegtmeier and Mitra 2015), consistently highlight the positive influence of training on entrepreneurial intent, actions, and overall performance. The literature suggests that skills acquired through formal education, training programs, and hands-on experiences contribute to the development of entrepreneurial intentions (Zhao, Seibert, and Hills 2005;Kuratko, Neubert, and Marvel 2021). Individuals with high self-efficacy, confident in their entrepreneurial skills, are more apt to actively leverage their networks, enhancing their entrepreneurial intentions (Piperopoulos and Dimov 2015). ...
Article
This study explores the determinants of entrepreneurial intentions among rural students in Oman's Dhofar region, focusing on self-efficacy, skills, and education as components of human capital. Using Bandura's social cognitive theory, a quantitative approach examines how psychological factors and experiential learning influence entrepreneurial intentions. Data from 467 randomly selected students were collected via self-reported surveys. Results show a significant positive relationship between self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intentions, with higher self-efficacy levels correlating with greater entrepreneurial inclination. Skills also positively impact entrepreneurial intentions, highlighting the importance of diverse skill sets. Additionally, self-efficacy moderates the relationship between skills and intentions, suggesting that high self-efficacy enhances the translation of skills into entrepreneurial ambitions. Unexpectedly, no significant correlation between education and entrepreneurial intentions was found. This study emphasizes the importance of psychological factors and experiential learning in shaping entrepreneurial intentions in unique socio-cultural and economic contexts. Insights can help policymakers and educators promote entrepreneurship and economic development in rural communities, fostering resilience and empowerment. This research enriches our understanding of entrepreneurship in diverse settings by examining the under-researched Dhofar region.
... Mentoring sessions were viewed as a safe space for students to discuss ideas and receive constructive feedback privately. Hence, they can be employed to improve students' self-confidence (Kuratko, Neubert, and Marvel 2021;Robinson et al. 2016;Vygotsky 1978) and provide them with more tailored guidance to enhance their ECs and propel their venture idea (Kuratko, Neubert, and Marvel 2021). Mentors can also provide their aspiring entrepreneurial students with access to a network of resources and connections, that can help validate and realise their startup potential (Rigg and O'Dwyer 2012). ...
... Mentoring sessions were viewed as a safe space for students to discuss ideas and receive constructive feedback privately. Hence, they can be employed to improve students' self-confidence (Kuratko, Neubert, and Marvel 2021;Robinson et al. 2016;Vygotsky 1978) and provide them with more tailored guidance to enhance their ECs and propel their venture idea (Kuratko, Neubert, and Marvel 2021). Mentors can also provide their aspiring entrepreneurial students with access to a network of resources and connections, that can help validate and realise their startup potential (Rigg and O'Dwyer 2012). ...
Article
Future engineers are labelled entrepreneurial engineers, possessing business skills that enable them to perform effectively in various contexts. Entrepreneurship education is a key avenue for equipping engineering students with these skills, with a growing propagation in their curricula in recent years. Still, scholarly efforts are limited in this domain, particularly regarding the application of active and experiential learning methods, despite early studies highlighting their effectiveness in developing entrepreneurial competencies. This case study presents a course for engineering undergraduates based on active learning theories and methods. We offer a comprehensive view of their perceived usefulness, opportunities, and challenges from the perspectives of the students, educator, and entrepreneurship education experts. This study advances the discussion on the intricacies of active learning applications in entrepreneurship, contributes to the limited literature on engineering entrepreneurship education, and provide insights to educators and pedagogical designers to effectively incorporate active methods into their curricula.
... Mentorship is often essential for successful entrepreneurship; mentors help guide founders through development decisions and connect them to resources (Kuratko et al., 2021;Mansoori et al., 2019). While many professionals seek coaches or mentors through their employer, entrepreneurs do not have this luxury. ...
... Since these are averages, it may be that ESOs help some firms survive while helping others disband early. At the same time, prior mentorship literature found that not all advice is helpful (St-Jean and Miltrano-Méda, 2016) and that impacts can depend on micro-level behaviors of entrepreneurs, such as coachability (Kuratko et al., 2021) and how well mentors and mentees are matched (St-Jean et al., 2018). Incubators broader resource and service provision could be detrimental in some cases to focused fundraising efforts by bringing distractions and conflicting advice. ...
Article
This paper asks how start-ups' participation in a mentoring program relates to finance and survival outcomes and how these outcomes differ for mentored firms compared to non-mentored and incubated firms in the same region. Drawing on the entrepreneurial support organization, mentoring, and innovation literatures, I posit that mentored firms will perform better than non-mentored firms, and that the specific micro-mechanisms of mentoring will lead to varied finance and survival outcomes for mentored as compared to incubated start-ups. Exploiting detailed data on the universe of entrepreneurial life sciences firms in the Research Triangle region of North Carolina over a 25-year time period and matching methods, results indicate that mentored firms perform better in terms of finance than non-mentored firms. Exploratory empirical extensions reveal mentored firms receive greater private and federal public funding than incubated firms, but not local public funding. Neither mentoring nor incubation services relate to survival outcomes. The paper concludes with practical implications for entrepreneurial support organization managers and economic development.
... Examining demographic differences between founders in general also seems to be a promising avenue for future research. Initial studies suggest that accelerators should have a relatively greater benefit for female founders [163], one reason for which could be that female founders are perceived as more coachable, which has direct impacts on the added-value provided by mentors [164]. Additionally, key resources for the startup process, i.e., financial, human, social and organizational capital, automatically increase in line with the age of the entrepreneur [165], whereas coachability decreases with age. ...
... Additionally, key resources for the startup process, i.e., financial, human, social and organizational capital, automatically increase in line with the age of the entrepreneur [165], whereas coachability decreases with age. It could therefore be assumed that accelerators are particularly valuable to young founders [164]. We therefore call for more quantitative research to examine the relationship between founder characteristics and the effectiveness of accelerator programs. ...
Article
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Accelerators are a new and fast-growing element in entrepreneurial ecosystems. However, our understanding about their impact on the development of startups remains limited. Utilizing a grounded theory approach and in-depth interviews with 21 entrepreneurs, this study investigates the value-adding mechanisms of accelerators. Our analysis, however, is not limited to financial capital, which allows us to highlight the relative importance of different forms of capital in the context of accelerators. We aim to understand how accelerators stimulate the development of participants and extend the support landscape for early-stage startups. Our results are threefold. First, we demonstrate that accelerators facilitate every step in the resource mobilization by reducing uncertainties and compensating for deficiencies. Second, the founding process becomes more structured, as participants build a founder identity and the process itself is professionalized. Third, accelerators support startups in building a resource base, by providing immediate resources and building bridges to various other resources.
... Mentorship is often essential for successful entrepreneurship; mentors help guide founders through development decisions and connect them to resources (Kuratko et al., 2021;Mansoori et al., 2019). While many professionals seek coaches or mentors through their employer, entrepreneurs do not have this luxury. ...
... Since these are averages, it may be that ESOs help some firms survive while helping others disband early. At the same time, prior mentorship literature found that not all advice is helpful (St-Jean and Miltrano-Méda, 2016) and that impacts can depend on micro-level behaviors of entrepreneurs, such as coachability (Kuratko et al., 2021) and how well mentors and mentees are matched (St-Jean et al., 2018). Incubators broader resource and service provision could be detrimental in some cases to focused fundraising efforts by bringing distractions and conflicting advice. ...
... In Hypothesis 2, regarding preincubation vs. the graduation rate, the analysis of the business idea and the entrepreneurial legal form were of strategic importance for the feasibility of the idea to be achieved [121,122]. Financial and market training of startup managers characterized this phase and its advancement as determining factors in the graduation rate [24,68,123]. The preincubation process reduced the gap in knowledge and skills between the academic world and business incubators [42]. ...
Article
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Business incubators contribute to the growth of a country, and it is of great interest to deepen knowledge of the impact of incubation phases on the results of incubators to evaluate the effectiveness of developed incubation programs. The objective of this research was to propose a model that quantitatively related different incubation phases to the graduation rate of business incubators in Spain. A sample of 88 incubators was obtained. The survey included 42 items identified in different phases (spreading entrepre-neurship, 9 items; pre-incubation, 9 items; basic incubation, 9 items; advanced incubation, 6 items; and graduation, 9 items) and four hypotheses relating to the existence of a positive influence from the startup incubation phases on the incubators results. These were validated by using a structural equation model (SEM) with five latent variables. Three of the four proposed hypotheses that linked startup pre-incubation (H2), basic incubation (H3), and advanced incubation (H4) with graduation rates in Spanish incubators were accepted. These startup incubation stages showed a positive influence on the startup graduation rate. The advanced incubation stage had a very strong relationship with the graduation rate (β = 0.543). Furthermore, a strong indirect effect between business incubation and the graduation rate, explaining 71% of the success of the incubators, was found. Proposals for improvement in each incubation phase to enhance the results of the business incubators are provided. Furthermore, future challenges that should be incorporated into the development of incubator programs, such as the social focus, the implementation of a training and monitoring model, an increase in network businesses, the internationaliza-tion of incubators with a globalized approach, the sustainability of the startup's approach, and the transfer focus, are raised. Given the high variability of Spanish incubators and the wide sampling range, the model could be extended to other contexts with similar behavior within the sample range.
... Almost half of the centers had an average of two or more endowed positions, with over $2.5 million endowed to each position. Today, coaching and mentoring programs have grown in importance and have been shown to be a major factor in new venture success (Kuratko et al., 2021). ...
Article
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In developing the Entrepreneurship Program at Indiana University-Bloomington, I took a contrarian approach to what the traditional expectations were of an entrepreneurship center. The traditional approach would entail an entrepreneurship center focused on outreach to the community to develop assistance programs for aspiring entrepreneurs and thus providing experiences for students. Instead, my focus was on the academic side of entrepreneurship with our research faculty and their scholarly output as that was paramount to my vision of how the entrepreneurship center and in effect the entrepreneurship program would be successful. In this article, I discuss the evolution of entrepreneurship programs and centers, the importance of entrepreneurship research, and my contrarian approach to building the program including the journey from initiation, the research focus, the faculty recruitment, the department name change, and the specific curriculum that was developed.
... This study showed that innovators (in this case entrepreneurs) who are more coachable are ultimately more successful during their time in these programs and are more satisfied with their mentorship experience. 30 In a related study, researchers Matthew R. Marvel, Marcus T. Wolfe, and Donald F. Kuratko examined entrepreneurs and their coaches within incubators and accelerators in order to see whether coachability could be used as a learning mechanism beneficial for exploring new knowledge, while also alleviating the constraining effects of prior knowledge, to create innovative offerings. 31 The study showed that coachability is helpful for accumulating missing information; engaging in experiments (e.g. ...
... Muchau, who noted that mentorship does not positively influence the capacity building of small-scale agro-processors. In another study on mentorship's influence on business performance, Kuratko et al. (2021) found that more coachable entrepreneurs are ultimately more successful during their time in these programs and are more satisfied with their mentorship experience. The general and overall observation is that mentorship is a critical capacity-building type for the economic empowerment of small-scale agro-processors. ...
Article
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This paper examines capacity building from the perspective of business growth and success in small-scale agro-processing enterprises. Our analytical approach was underpinned by the inability of small-scale agri-enterprises to grow and succeed despite the South African government's support for capacity building through the economic empowerment programme initiative in the past three decades. The study was conducted in five of nine selected South African provinces (Gauteng, Limpopo, North-West, Free State, and Mpumalanga). This study was essential for developing an effective strategy for enhancing agri-business growth and success in South Africa. A concurrent mixed-methods research design was used, and data from 503 small-scale agro-processors was analysed using descriptive and multiple regression analysis techniques. The results revealed that capacity building (β = 0.274, p = 0.000) significantly influences the economic empowerment of small-scale agro-processors. Furthermore, the study showed that mentorship and technical and financial skills are critical types of capacity building that influence the economic empowerment of small-scale agro-processors in South Africa. It is recommended that all government or private stakeholders, including agricultural extension advisory services, invest in capacity-building programmes for small-scale agro-processors to achieve economic empowerment. Economically empowered small-scale agro-processors will significantly contribute to employment creation and better income distribution.
... However, this is unlikely to happen in informal mentoring dynamics or even in an incubator or accelerator programmes where mentors have more nested functions to meet specific support needs, rather than being oriented towards a more developmental relationship where learning is the key. It is likely that the narcissism of both mentor and mentee is, on the one hand, a hindrance to mentoring where coachability could be reduced (Kuratko et al., 2021;Marvel et al., 2020). However, it could also steer mentoring dynamics in other programmes towards a more instrumental perspective, where the mentee will see the mentor as a resource to be exploited and not as someone likely to accompany the individual over the long term to generate diverse learning. ...
Article
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The personality configuration of mentors and mentees is important in understanding mentoring outcomes. While the best mentors appear to have higher degrees of agreeableness and conscientiousness, entrepreneurs generally score lower on agreeableness and have higher degrees of narcissism, a personality trait that could be detrimental to mentoring. We investigated the interaction of narcissism with two traits from the Big Five Inventory, namely agreeableness and conscientiousness, to see how this interaction influenced learning from the relationship of mentee entrepreneurs. Our findings suggest that mentee narcissism negatively influences learning, and mentor agreeableness mitigates the negative effects on mentee learning. These findings show certain beneficial personality configurations in entrepreneurial mentoring and provide elements to consider in managerial practice when pairing mentors and mentees in this context.
... Research has established that mentoring is an ideal conduit of tacit knowledge between individuals (Lave and Wenger 1991). Nevertheless, this phenomenon is under-researched, and little is known about the mentorship process in general (Kuratko et al. 2021). For example, prior research has unearthed which factors are relevant for the diffusion of tacit knowledge between employees (Haldin-Herrgard 2000; Joia and Lemos 2010), in supply chain networks (Todo et al. 2016), in R&D networks (Jiafu et al. 2018Liu et al. 2021), and more recently in SMEs (Bracci et al. 2022). ...
Article
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Research on tacit knowledge in the entrepreneurship field has raised a significant amount of interest in recent years and has developed both quickly and unequally. On the one hand, there is consensus that tacit knowledge is highly valued in the context of entrepreneurship as it often holds unique insights, expertise, and problem-solving capabilities that can provide a competitive advantage to individuals and organizations. On the other hand, research on the intersection of entrepreneurship and tacit knowledge has evolved significantly and developed in different directions (e.g., in terms of research context, levels of analysis, proxies), resulting in fragmented and often ambiguous findings. Therefore, the goal of this study is to consolidate the state-of-the-art of scholarly research published in top-tier entrepreneurship journals. To this aim, we performed a systematic literature review by analysing a set of 25 papers in order to synthesize prior research, identify key gaps and contributions, and propose a framework to enhance our understanding of tacit knowledge in entrepreneurship. This review provides a valuable resource for scholars interested in the intersection of tacit knowledge and entrepreneurship. Our article underscores the need for further research by proposing a research agenda to bridge existing gaps, expand knowledge, and shape the future of this important field.
... Coachability is the object of increasing attention and discussion in startup ecosystems and is a core component in entrepreneurship education, where mentoring and coaching initiatives are being developed across institutions, to leverage alumni help to develop student startup competence (Kuratko, Neubert, & Marvel, 2021;Nabi, Walmsley, & Akhtar, 2021). Research on founder coachability, however, predominately draws from the context of entrepreneurial pitches to angel investors rather than focusing on other contexts, such as due diligence, terms negotiation, or mentoring relationships after an investment is made. ...
Article
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As coaching and alumni mentoring are used to develop student startup talent the coachability of students becomes an enabling factor for reflection-and action-based learning methods in entre-preneurship education. There is limited research on how to assess and develop coachability, especially in entrepreneurship education. This paper aims to narrow the gap. This study adopts a competency-based approach by devising competency assessment tools, undertaking a coach-ability survey and using Behavioral Event Interviews. It thus adopts a mixed method design, combining quantitative and qualitative techniques. Our exploratory research shows that coachability has a positive relationship with educational outcomes and that coachability competencies, such as self-awareness and flexibility, are important. We show that coachability can be developed through experiential learning and that such learning enables the acquisition of competencies, such as transferring learning into action and taking initiative. The opportunity to develop coachability through entrepreneurship education fosters the design of experiential learning and strengthens students' coachability competencies, thereby aiding graduates' capacity to attract venture funding. We make an original contribution to assessing coachability by adopting a multi-method and multi-perspective approach and provide a way of creating greater impact when assessing and developing coachability.
... Entrepreneurial activities in entrepreneurship incubation programs are genuine attempts to build companies with the guidance and support of university entrepreneurship centers, in contrast to extracurricular activities tied to specific courses (Bagheri et al., 2013;Kuratko, 2005). In the entrepreneurship literature, thus, many scholars have drawn samples of entrepreneurs from incubator programs (e.g., Ahsan et al., 2018;Guerrero et al., 2018;Kuratko et al., 2021;Marvel et al., 2022;Uy et al., 2015Uy et al., , 2021. ...
Article
Recent studies indicate that a team with entrepreneurial passion performs positively. To understand the dynamics of new venture teams (NVTs), however, more research is needed on cross-level interactions and the cyclical relationship between passion and performance. We hypothesize that the perception of a lead entrepreneur’s passion and entrepreneurial passion diversity are team-level constructs that influence the relationship between entrepreneurial passion and performance. Furthermore, utilizing the input-mediator-output-input (IMOI) model, we investigate whether the performance of NVTs affects members’ pre- and post-entrepreneurial passions while developing their businesses. We collected and analyzed multi-wave data from 160 individuals nested in 53 NVTs. The results indicate that entrepreneurial passion predicts perceptions of performance in general. However, the focal relationship is moderated by how NVT members perceive the lead entrepreneur’s passion. Our findings also suggest that entrepreneurial passion diversity directly hinders performance perception, although it does not influence the passion-performance link. Moreover, this study reveals that the perception of NVT performance mediates the effect of prior passion on subsequent passion, supporting the cyclic nature of the passion-performance relationship in NVTs. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed.
... The choice of mentors should be made carefully, considering not only their professional, but also personal characteristics as mentors. It has a significant impact on the outcome of their cooperation with startupers (Kuratko, D.F., Neubert, E., Marvel, M.R., 2021). The methods and mechanisms for innovation during the pandemic have changed considerably (Gopalakrishnan, S. & Kovoor-Misra, S., 2021). ...
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The purpose of the paper is to investigate accelerators as a new element of interaction between universities, business and state. This process can be used for improving entrepreneurial education, which increases the innovation potential of universities. The study uses methods of analysis and synthesis, systematic approach, method of classification, method of comparison and method of measurement. The need for massive changes in higher education is proved. Also, increased attention to entrepreneurial education and involvement of business representatives community in educational process is needed. This proposed accelerator is the most perspective cooperation instrument between business, universities and state itself. Mainly it can be used in the process of entrepreneurial education improvement and innovative potential development. Different types of accelerators under the concept of "creation initiator" are considered. The examples of such accelerators worldwide and in Ukraine are investigated. It is proved that the most attractive option would be to create an accelerator on the basis of a university. That would combine financial, production, intellectual and other capabilities of several large companies with the innovative potential of the university. All participants will receive positive results. It was found that the distinctive feature of a university accelerator lies not only in its business orientation, but also focuses on the development of teaching and training materials, which can be scaled to accelerators in other universities.
... Ciuchta et al. (2018, p. 868) defined coachability as "the degree to which an entrepreneur seeks, carefully considers, and integrates feedback to improve his or her venture's performance." In a study of 401 startup mentors and 695 founders, Kuratko et al. (2021) discovered that an entrepreneur's coachability was positively correlated to venture goal progress, firm performance, and whether the entrepreneur's mentorship expectations were met. For poverty entrepreneurs, this suggests the need for mentors to directly address the meaning of success and how it translates into achievable performance targets, as well as the need to increase these targets incrementally while helping the entrepreneur balance the perceived costs and benefits of success. ...
... The government could consider offering a mentoring program, especially to funded SMEs for a predetermined period until they are selfsufficient enough to utilize the funding as planned. Mentoring has a positive impact on business target development, product innovation, business performance, and the desire to engage in the mentorship program (Kuratko, Neubert & Marvel, 2021). ...
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This study intended to investigate how the Lephalale Local Municipality's small and medium companies (SMEs) are hampered by a lack of government support. This study also aims to demonstrate how SMEs face difficulties in surviving as a result of problems in the business environment. Consequently, the government of South Africa has programs to assist SMEs. The growth of SMEs is important for advancing innovation, wealth distribution, and employment. The majority of SMEs launch and maintain their businesses with their own money. By using a qualitative research approach and semi-structured in-person, phone, and email interviews to collect data, the goals of this study were met. There were 318 registered SMEs in the area. Using purposive sampling methods, data from operational enterprises with a lifespan of 0 to 5 years were gathered. Atlas TI 8 was used to evaluate the data. The primary conclusions of this study show that (i) small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) find it difficult to maintain their operations because they lack access to capital and business equipment. This fails if SMEs are not given the proper support. Because they lack the resources to compete with big companies, SMEs find it challenging. (ii) Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) should think about enrolling in bookkeeping training and sending their staff to business training in order to network for the survival of the company. In order to assist SMEs in fulfilling the requirements for maintaining their enterprises, this study advises the government to examine present standards. With the right assistance, SMEs can create business plans and maintain operations, which will result in the creation of jobs, particularly for local communities. The government ought to think about mentoring and overseeing sponsored SMEs.
... This research focuses not only on preinvestment, which includes the startup selection process, but also on post-investment, which includes mentoring programs related to the role of venture capital in startup growth (Kuratko et al., 2021). Through the mentoring program, it is expected that venture capital provides the innovations needed by startups to increase their success rate. ...
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The low success rate of startups has caused venture capital firms to bear a large risk of investment failure (BRI Ventures, 2021). Venture capital firms play an important role in identifying potential startups and being the driving force for startup success. This study aims to find out the role of BRI Ventures (BVI) in increasing the success rate of startups in Indonesia, how BRI Ventures (BVI) makes funding decisions, and the criteria set before funding startups. The data analysis uses descriptive qualitative analysis, which includes content, thematic, and constant comparative analysis and is processed using the NVivo 12 Pro software application. This study uses the diffusion of innovation theory to examine the role of BRI Ventures (BVI) in increasing the success rate of startups in Indonesia. The results show that BRI Ventures (BVI) uses the 5Ps approach, a self-designed investment analysis tool to assess whether a startup is feasible to fund. The indicators of 5Ps include people, product, potential market, performance, and potential upsides. The people indicator, which consists of the founder and the team, plays an important role in the success of a startup. The findings of this study suggest that BRI Ventures proactively provide innovations through mentoring programs to increase the success rate of startups. This research is expected to be useful in the financial sector, especially in terms of funding and innovation, for the business sustainability.
... accelerators), which often have a large coaching component, findings regarding the value of being coachable are mixed. Some work has suggested that being coachable is positively related to important outcomes, such as the innovativeness of products and Page 2 Marvel, 2021;Marvel, Wolfe, & Kuratko, 2020). Other findings, however, demonstrate that coachability has no impact on firm performance (Bryan, Tilcsik, & Zhu, 2017). ...
... In the category of psychological functions, research findings point at the importance of socio-emotional support and the development of entrepreneurial maturity, especially in relation to knowledge development (Kuratko, Neubert, Marvel, 2021). Studies also highlight the factors that maximize mentee learning which occurs throughout a mentoring relationship (Gimmon, 2014;McKevitt, Marshall, 2015). ...
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Purpose: The purpose of the study is to contribute to the debate on the entrepreneurial context of the curriculum of business and management training programs by diagnosing the educational needs and expectations of mentors in developing entrepreneurial competence in the European food sector. Design/methodology/approach: Two qualitative methods, Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) and content analysis, were applied to analyze a set of 17 interviews with start-up mentors about their educational needs and expectations. The paper builds on the study by Bisk (2002), who indicated that what entrepreneurs primarily seek from their mentors is career-related advice of a general business nature, not sector-specific. Findings: The study confirms that mentors in the food sector predominantly need managerial competencies and business tools to guide entrepreneurs and start-ups, and there are specific areas of these competencies that need to be addressed in the curricula of professional training programs designed for mentors. Research limitations/implications: The results cannot be generalized to all mentors or each mentoring program, as the sample size was small, the research project was limited to an online format, and the respondents were predominantly recruited by one organization. To further build on the results, studies are recommended to be carried out in other sectors, in other mentoring training programs, as well as in the context of sustainable and entrepreneurial circular economy. Furthermore, research on the mentees’ prospects could also complement the findings. Practical implications: The study offers practical insight into the curriculum of the training programs designed for mentors in the food sector. Originality/value: The study takes an innovative, methodological approach to produce transferable evidence from the combination of conventional text analysis, and Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA), which combined led to the development of an integrative SWOT matrix framework for future mentoring training programs built around the entrepreneurial context. The research results are addressed to educators and academics who design and organize training programs for mentors and support the development of entrepreneurial competencies. Keywords: mentors, start-ups, entrepreneurial competence, business mentoring, training programs. Category of the paper: Research paper.
... 2. Mentoring services. Mentorship is an essential element of the support that entrepreneurs receive in accelerators (Assenova, 2020;Kuratko et al., 2021;Yitshaki and Drori, 2018). Mentorship offers two important types of support: socio-psychological and functional (Kram, 1983;St-Jean and Audet, 2012). ...
Article
This study was driven by an initial finding that female founders' participation rate in Israeli accelerators is significantly higher (15.3 %) than their participation rate in the. Israeli startup sector (7.4 %). Linking accelerators' design to the known barriers to female entrepreneurship, we examined how accelerators may enhance female entrepreneurship by addressing their specific needs. Based on a dataset (N = 779) of structured interviews with startup founders who participated in accelerator programs in Israel during 2011–2019, we present evidence that female founders seek and gain more entrepreneurial knowledge, network building, and entrepreneurial self-efficacy during their participation in accelerators than do male founders. Female founders also seek to increase their legitimacy more than do their male counterparts but did not report making more progress in this aspect. Finally, both the goal of and progress in obtaining access to capital and improving fundraising skills received lower ratings from female founders than from male founders. We further ask whether accelerators are more helpful for women because they are better adapted to the female gender or because they are generally better adapted to founders with those background conditions that often characterize women. We found that the startup's stage of development and the founder's prior entrepreneurial experience mediated most gender differences, supporting the latter possibility. We discuss the implications of our findings for accelerators and other support programs as a means of increasing women's participation rates in innovative entrepreneurship.
... This can help in the acquisition of business skills to assist (Johnson, 2019). Such steps can be useful in the establishment of more start-ups (Kuratko et al., 2021). Finally, strategic partnerships become crucial in assisting the post-settlement phase of African immigrants (Ngota et al., 2019). ...
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Purpose The study explores experiences of African immigrants in their self-employment journey. South Africa has been receiving many African immigrants seeking for socio-economic survival. This presents a gap to understand the self-employment journey of such immigrants post-settlement. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative inquiry is used with semi-structured interviews using a sample of African immigrants based in South Africa. Narrative enquiry was utilised in trying to understand the African immigrant self-employment journey. Findings The findings show strategies used by African immigrant entrepreneurs in their self-employment journey. These include immigrant relying on established relationships to respond to contextual challenges. Further, immigrant entrepreneurs turned to borrowing from family, including personal savings and using fronts as a capital generation strategy. Originality/value Based on the findings strategies are suggested as a useful precursor in advancing understanding of the African immigrant self-employment journey. This becomes useful especially considering ideals for assisting post-settlement of migrants.
... Turban and Dougherty (1994) found that mentee proactivity can increase the benefits received by the mentee in a mentoring relationship. Mentees are expected to commit to the relationship for the duration, come with clear goals for each meeting (Kuratko et al., 2021;Viator, 1999), take initiatives to set meeting times, be prepared and on time for the meetings, and be open and receptive to constructive feedback. Hansford et al. (2002) identified categories of mentee and mentor problems in mentorship programs. ...
Article
Using the theory of social exchange, we investigated the mediating role of a good match between commitment and personal character (independent variables) and achievement of mentorship program objectives (dependent variables). Even though mentorship programs are designed to fulfill their designated objectives, the extent to which they are achieved is often not fully known. The focus of the study is a post-secondary professional mentorship program offered Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary, which matches undergraduate and graduate students with business professionals. Data were collected primarily through questionnaires. We found that commitment (both the mentees' commitment and the mentees' perception of their mentors' commitment) and the mentors' character are important variables to actuate the exchange mechanism for learning to occur. These input variables are significant in predicting a good match and ultimately in determining whether the mentee's expectations are met, which had not been tested through an empirical analysis in prior literature. Also, our findings suggest that the importance of the mentor's personal character as a role model must be considered in the matching process. Care must be taken to customize the match to the needs of the specific mentor and mentee. Based on the findings, several suggestions are made for improvement of mentorship programs.
... Businesses run by experienced entrepreneurial teams can bring a more "diversified and skilled resource base" (Lagazio & Querci, 2018, p. 319). Entrepreneurial team make-up (e.g., Federico et al., 2012), gender and racial diversity (e.g., Roberson & Park, 2007;Welbourne et al., 2007), education (e.g., Cooper et al., 1994), industry-specific experience (e.g., Ko & McKelvie, 2018;Tyebjee & Bruno, 1984), prior founding experience (e.g., Hsu, 2007), reputation (e.g., Ebbers & Wijnberg, 2012;Ko & McKelvie, 2018), and coachability (e.g., Kuratko et al., 2021;Marvel et al., 2020) are all shown to have positive effects on performance and serve as human capital signals. ...
Article
The first communication an entrepreneur often has with a potential investor is submitting a one-page executive summary for consideration. Subsequently, the potential investor—or investment group—chooses which venture ideas, from submitted summaries, to further consider by inviting a pitch deck and/or an actual business pitch (either in-person or virtual). This investment funnel is competitive and, accordingly, anything we—as scholars—can share with entrepreneurs seeking advice about how to optimize that initial executive summary to increase chances of getting to the pitch would be immensely valuable. Unfortunately, scant research has focused on this opportunity introduction stage and there is precious little we can prescribe for entrepreneurs seeking investment. To address this, we developed four executive summaries, which varied only in the type of capital mentioned. We found that executive summaries that mentioned human capital more prominently were viewed as more cognitively legitimate and as deserving of a higher opportunity recognition valuation. Put succinctly, consistent with our theorizing findings from our Open Science Framework pre-registered experiment (N = 367), and our qualitative follow-up study, showed that human capital signals have a greater positive influence on potential investors’ decisions relative to social capital, intellectual capital, and financial capital. We discuss the practical and theory-based implications of this novel insight and include prescriptive recommendations for entrepreneurs.
... This research is about mentorship in a stand-alone aggregate capacity, face-to-face, structured process with benevolent, accomplished business professionals who want to give back to local communities by assisting beginner entrepreneurs (Kuratko et al., 2021). Mentors help mentees to develop self-efficacy by providing vicarious experiences as positive examples, allowing them to evaluate and enhance their entrepreneurial and business competencies through social comparison and imitation (van Esch et al., 2021). ...
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Farmers have been very precious for societies for ages. Their active experiments, valuable knowledge about their surroundings, environment, and crops’ requirements have been a vital part of society. However, the psychological perspectives have been a hole in the loop of farming. Hence, this study has investigated the antecedents of entrepreneurial behaviors of farmers with the mediating risk of their entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE). The population chosen for this study was the farming community of suburbs of China, and a sample size of 300 was selected for the data collection. This is a survey study, where a structured questionnaire was adapted on a five-point Likert scale. The data were collected from the farming community to know their psychological and behavioral preferences about their profession. This study has produced interesting results that education, training, and intrinsic motivation play a vital role in farmers’ ESE, affecting their entrepreneurial behaviors. This study will add to the body of knowledge and provide an eminent path for emerging entrepreneurs to find more mentorship opportunities to overcome the limitations in upcoming endeavors influencing education and training.
... To avail these benefits altogether, a nascent entrepreneur often prefers joining incubation center spaces to get instantly connected with experienced mentors, representatives from government institutes, linkages from industry and academia. Evidence in recent studies suggests that mentorship from experienced individuals has become essential to entrepreneurs and their fledgling ventures (Kuratko et al., 2020). Yet, current theory and practice need the clarity that how the degree of expectations from mentors weigh in nascent entrepreneurs new venture creation; and to what extent nascent entrepreneur's abilities of nothing to lose and resilience strengthen/weaken this relationship. ...
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The purpose of this research is to investigate the influence of mentor expectations on nascent entrepreneur’s venture creation and how this relationship strengthens/weakens when mediated by the sense of nothing to lose and entrepreneurial resilience. The authors nested the data from mentors and nascent entrepreneurs by using a questionnaire survey. Mentors were those individuals who were established entrepreneurs and involved in training nascent entrepreneurs. Nascent entrepreneurs were those who were part of the cohorts in incubation centres for startup training. Data revealed that it was unlikely to create a new venture when mentors displayed low expectations in nascent entrepreneurs. However, this relationship was positively mediated by the sense of nothing to lose and entrepreneurial resilience. The findings have important implications on how mentor expectations can hinder nascent entrepreneurs’ venture creation and how it turns around when entrepreneurs display the abilities of nothing to lose and resilience. Keywords: low expectations; the sense of nothing to lose; entrepreneurial resilience; new venture creation; entrepreneurship
... Mentorship is an essential element of the support that entrepreneurs receive in accelerators (Assenova, 2020;Kuratko et al., 2021;Yitshaki & Drori, 2018). Mentorship offers two important types of support: socio-psychological and functional (Kram, 1983;St-Jean & Audet, 2012). ...
Article
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This study was driven by an initial finding that female founders' participation rate in Israeli accelerators is significantly higher (15.3 %) than their participation rate in the. Israeli startup sector (7.4 %). Linking accelerators' design to the known barriers to female entrepreneurship, we examined how accelerators may enhance female entrepreneurship by addressing their specific needs. Based on a dataset (N = 779) of structured interviews with startup founders who participated in accelerator programs in Israel during 2011–2019, we present evidence that female founders seek and gain more entrepreneurial knowledge, network building, and entrepreneurial self-efficacy during their participation in accelerators than do male founders. Female founders also seek to increase their legitimacy more than do their male counterparts but did not report making more progress in this aspect. Finally, both the goal of and progress in obtaining access to capital and improving fundraising skills received lower ratings from female founders than from male founders. We further ask whether accelerators are more helpful for women because they are better adapted to the female gender or because they are generally better adapted to founders with those background conditions that often characterize women. We found that the startup's stage of development and the founder's prior entrepreneurial experience mediated most gender differences, supporting the latter possibility. We discuss the implications of our findings for accelerators and other support programs as a means of increasing women's participation rates in innovative entrepreneurship.
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Este artigo analisou as publicações científicas que exploram diferentes perspectivas sobre startups, programas de aceleração e seus impactos no desenvolvimento desse modelo de negócio e no processo de transferência de tecnologia. Para tanto foi realizada uma revisão sistemática de artigos que tratam desta temática, os artigos analisados foram selecionados pela Methodi Ordinatio, método de revisão elaborado por Pagani, Kovaleski e Resende (2015). Essa metodologia emprega uma abordagem sistemática, permitindo a ordenação dos artigos por relevância, com base no número de citações, no fator de impacto e no ano de publicação. A pesquisa foi realizada nas bases de dados Science Direct e Capes, resultando na identificação de 458 artigos. Após aplicação dos critérios de seleção da metodologia, os 10 artigos mais relevantes foram analisados em profundidade.
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This article examines the factors that explain the entrepreneurial success of nascent entrepreneurs who received support from entrepreneurial support structures before setting up their own businesses. To arrive at the results, an exploratory qualitative study was conducted with 10 entrepreneurs operating in the commerce sector. This research reveals various factors contributing to entrepreneurial success, classified into six categories: psycho-behavioral, cultural, quality-of-life, managerial, financial, and institutional factors. It appears that entrepreneurial success is multifactorial and does not depend on a single factor but on the combination and interaction of multiple individual, organizational, and contextual elements. Each entrepreneur has a unique pathway, influenced by their characteristics and the environment in which they operate, which means that support strategies need to be tailored to the specific needs of each entrepreneur. The implications of this research extend to researchers, practitioners, and stakeholders involved in local and regional development.
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Focusing on a specific form of entrepreneurship education, entrepreneurial mentoring, we take a relational mentoring perspective and develop a model of entrepreneurs’ assessments of potential mentors. We theorize that if mentees perceive their business-related values to be similar to a potential mentor’s values, they are more likely to choose this mentor, and that this relationship is moderated by different types of the potential mentor’s experiences (i.e., entrepreneurial experience, industry experience, and mentoring experience). We test our hypotheses using a metric conjoint experiment and 2,240 assessments of potential mentors by 140 entrepreneurs. Our findings reveal that mentees' perception of business-related value similarity with a potential mentor increases the likelihood of choosing this mentor. Further, higher levels of mentors’ experiences strengthen this relationship. We discuss the implications of our study for research on entrepreneurial mentoring and relational learning in the entrepreneurial context, and we provide practical insights on how the matching process in mentoring programs may be facilitated.
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Purpose Despite the well-documented importance of empathy and mentoring in entrepreneurship, there is a need for a deeper understanding of how empathy influences individuals’ “willingness to be mentored”. Design/methodology/approach This paper investigates gender differences in “Willingness to be mentored” based on the mentor’s types of empathy (cognitive vs affective) and entrepreneurship (social vs for-profit). Drawing on the personal identification and the entrepreneurship literature, we measured the respondents’ “Willingness to be mentored” by manipulating the type of empathy and entrepreneurship and comparing its effect between male and female respondents. Primary survey data were collected from master’s degree students in entrepreneurship from diverse business schools. An explanatory qualitative study on female start-uppers complemented the findings. Findings The results from the quantitative study show that female respondents prefer to be mentored by an entrepreneur who exhibits some affective empathy rather than only cognitive empathy, with a preference for a social entrepreneur. The qualitative study confirms the evidence. This research contributes to the discussion on developing social capabilities to succeed in new ventures. It extends our understanding of the importance of empathic entrepreneurs as mentors to foster entrepreneurship among women. Originality/value Theoretically, we demonstrate the existence of a gender difference in “Willingness to be mentored” based on the type of empathy displayed by the entrepreneur. Additionally, we introduce a new construct in the entrepreneurship literature, “Willingness to be mentored”, and differentiate it from “Attitude toward entrepreneurship”.
Article
Importance Because mentorship is critical for professional development and career advancement, it is essential to examine the status of mentorship and identify challenges that junior surgical faculty (assistant and associate professors) face obtaining effective mentorship. Objective To evaluate the mentorship experience for junior surgical faculty and highlight areas for improvement. Design, Setting, and Participants This qualitative study was an explanatory sequential mixed-methods study including an anonymous survey on mentorship followed by semistructured interviews to expand on survey findings. Junior surgical faculty from 18 US academic surgery programs were included in the anonymous survey and interviews. Survey responses between “formal” (assigned by the department) vs “informal” (sought out by the faculty) mentors and male vs female junior faculty were compared using χ ² tests. Interview responses were analyzed for themes until thematic saturation was achieved. Survey responses were collected from November 2022 to August 2023, and interviews conducted from July to December 2023. Exposure Mentorship from formal and/or informal mentors. Main Outcomes and Measures Survey gauged the availability and satisfaction with formal and informal mentorship; interviews assessed broad themes regarding mentorship. Results Of 825 survey recipients, 333 (40.4%) responded; 155 (51.7%) were male and 134 (44.6%) female. Nearly all respondents (319 [95.8%]) agreed or strongly agreed that mentorship is important to their surgical career, especially for professional networking (309 respondents [92.8%]), career advancement (301 [90.4%]), and research (294 [88.3%]). However, only 58 respondents (18.3%) had a formal mentor. More female than male faculty had informal mentors (123 [91.8%] vs 123 [79.4%]; P = .003). Overall satisfaction was higher with informal mentorship than formal mentorship (221 [85.0%] vs 40 [69.0%]; P = .01). Most male and female faculty reported no preferences in gender or race and ethnicity for their mentors. When asked if they had good mentor options if they wanted to change mentors, 141 (47.8%) responded no. From the interviews (n = 20), 6 themes were identified, including absence of mentorship infrastructure, preferred mentor characteristics, and optimizing mentorship. Conclusions and Relevance Academic junior surgical faculty agree mentorship is vital to their careers. However, this study found that few had formal mentors and almost half need more satisfactory options if they want to change mentors. Academic surgical programs should adopt a framework for facilitating mentorship and optimize mentor-mentee relationships through alignment of mentor-mentee goals and needs.
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This paper presents the key findings of a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) aimed at investigating the mentoring approaches practiced by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Malaysia, China, the United States of America (USA), and the United Kingdom (UK) to enhance their support systems for aspiring post-graduation entrepreneurs. Recognizing the growing significance of entrepreneurship in today's society, these HEIs have emphasized entrepreneurial mentorship to support and nurture student entrepreneurs. Using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) methodology, the review focuses on two primary objectives. Firstly, it aims to identify the competencies required by mentor entrepreneurs who are lecturers within these institutions. Secondly, it seeks to identify the specific areas of emphasis in mentoring entrepreneurs within HEIs in the four selected countries. The selected articles are categorized into three main themes: entrepreneur mentoring competencies, entrepreneurship mentoring focus, and the mentoring approaches practiced at HEIs in these countries. The findings reveal that mentor entrepreneurs, typically lecturers, possess essential competencies, including personality traits, practical experience, relevant skills, and comprehensive knowledge of entrepreneurship. Differences and similarities in the focus and approach to mentoring entrepreneurs are observed among the four countries, reflecting their unique entrepreneurial landscapes and cultural contexts. However, commonalities also exist, particularly in the overarching goal of supporting and nurturing aspiring entrepreneurs. In conclusion, this SLR highlights the competencies required by mentor entrepreneurs and sheds light on the diverse approaches adopted by HEIs in Malaysia, China, the USA, and the UK to mentor and guide students in entrepreneurship. These findings can inform the development of effective mentoring programs tailored to the specific needs and challenges faced by aspiring entrepreneurs in different educational contexts. Keywords: Entrepreneurship, HEI's entrepreneurs, mentee, mentor, mentor's competencies, mentorship
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Case competitions provide a unique opportunity for students at all academic levels to amalgamate and synthesize everything they learn in the classroom into an applied real-world context utilizing the case construct. Most of these contests are ungraded, thereby allowing students, mentors, and faculty on both sides of the proverbial desk to be highly candid in their feedback without creating an uncomfortable situation, allowing it to be more constructive, affecting the culture of a traditional classroom or their grade point average, or impacting teaching evaluations. The result is often an analytically rigorous paper or PowerPoint presentation where students can adroitly demonstrate their knowledge of the concepts, effectively defend their recommendations, engage in meaningful Q&A, and follow best practices related to teamwork. This study aims to explore the mentorship and coaching strategies for case competition teams in undergraduate and graduate academic programs. The two most significant factors affecting case competition rank are “Mentor Hours” and “Effort Invested as a Team.”
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Ongoing developments in entrepreneurship education are resulting in greater collaborations across campuses. This movement will have tremendous potential for not only developing better- prepared students in the disruptive innovative age, but also for producing far more impactful innovations than ever before. Entrepreneurship is not just for business schools, as it applies to music, art, science, law, public policy, medicine, pharmacy, agriculture, engineering, sociology, and virtually any other discipline. Many of tomorrow’s most innovative ideas will be for ‘ventures’ that come schools across the campus. The goal is to foster the entrepreneurial mindset among every member of the university community. An inter-disciplinary approach brings more credibility and substance to entrepreneurial studies and the potential of entrepreneurial behaviors. In addition, developing cross-campus entrepreneurship programs will change the culture of a campus. In this conceptual paper we examine cross campus entrepreneurship as it impacts, faculty, students, administrators, and the entire culture of the university. We outline a pathway for entrepreneurship education across the campus. We contend it is the impetus to create the entrepreneurial university.
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Purpose The aim of this study is to systematise the entrepreneurial coaching (EC) literature by understanding how the phenomenon has been investigated along four dimensions inspired by Gartner’s (1985) conceptualisation of entrepreneurship: entrepreneurial process, context, target and outcomes. In so doing, this study will provide a frame of its multifunctional role and identify relevant gaps and suggestions for future research. Design/methodology/approach We conducted a systematic literature review to collect existing works on EC. We analysed 85 selected papers with a qualitative content analysis that allowed us to highlight relevant research themes for the entrepreneurial process, context, outcomes and target. Findings Our results demonstrate that EC has a multifunctional role in entrepreneurship that can be summarised in five different typologies, depending on the stage of the entrepreneurial process in which it is applied, the context, the target and the outcomes. Originality/value As one of the first attempts to systematise studies on EC, this work extends previous conceptualisation of EC by detailing different typologies of this intervention, thereby contributing to reduced fragmentation and conceptual ambiguity.
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Entrepreneurs are often depicted as lone heroes. However , they are encouraged to seek and use feedback from their social environment to refine their venture ideas and enhance performance. Surprisingly, systematic research on entrepreneurs' feedback-seeking is in its infancy, and this nascent research is marked by conceptual vagueness about the feedback-seeking process and the limitations of related concepts. This article leverages the rich research on feedback seeking from organizational behavior/applied psychology to expli-cate the nature of entrepreneurs' interpersonal feedback seeking while considering the specific demands of entrepreneurship. We delineate feedback seeking from related concepts and theorize a process model of how entrepreneurs seek feedback to pursue instrumental, ego, symbolic, and relational goals, resulting in outcomes not only for entrepreneurs but also for their ventures and immediate and wider social environments. This article provides a foundation for research on entrepreneurs' feedback seeking that is attentive to their personal goals and vulnerabilities while also considering the impact of this process on their social environment. Our conceptual model also offers new
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Coachability-an individual difference construct describing how individuals seek, engage with, process, and react to feedback and other learning opportunities-is a critical factor associated with skill acquisition and success in academic and occupational settings. We conducted a study to advance coachability research in two significant ways. First, we introduce an expanded coachability conceptualization that includes new aspects (i.e., growth mindset, reactions to positive feedback). Second, we developed a coachability situational judgment task (SJT), which appears to be the first non-Likert coachability assessment. Participants (N = 800; 18-55 years) completed our coachability SJT and a coachability Likert-scale and, following a nine-month delay, high-and low-judgment measures of job performance. Results supported the scoring, generalizability, and inference validity for the new coachability SJT. Implications for future refinement and use of the scale are discussed.
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Extracurricular activities are increasingly being recognized for developing practical skills among entrepreneurial learners and connecting entrepreneurship curricula with real life. They offer socially situated learning experiences that can be cognitively stimulating and elicit reflective practices. However, the theoretical and pedagogical underpinnings of extracurricular activities in entrepreneurship are still in early stages, with their contribution towards entrepreneurship education requiring more empirical support. Moreover, current entrepreneurship pedagogies lack a much-needed integration of ecosystem actors’ inputs, who posses specific expertise with regards to extracurricular entrepreneurial activities. To address these issues, this study gathered the views of entrepreneurship mentors, consultants, and investors on the extracurricular activities that can be deployed to improve the skills of entrepreneurial learners, through conducting 22 in-depth interviews with experts from 13 countries across the world. We analyzed the results through a hybrid, inductive and deductive, approach. The experts recommended 34 extracurricular activities, that were discursively mapped against relevant learning theories: cognitive, experiential, social, situated, and existential. The study adds to the limited theoretical discussion on the origins of extracurricular activities and paves the way for theoretical evaluations in entrepreneurship education. It can aid educators in effectively integrating extracurricular activities in their curricula to better develop students’ entrepreneurial competences.
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Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) is an important construct in the fields of management and entrepreneurship research. Interest in EO knowledge continues to thrive with a burgeoning research agenda in multiple contexts and with diverse implications. However, a subset of this research, which endeavors to apply the EO construct to explain or predict individuals’ entrepreneurial beliefs and behaviors, has met with resistance. This paper examines the case for EO at the individual level (Ind.EO). We consider the EO legacy concerns, and the various theoretical implications and benefits of doing so. Drawing upon an “EO as a family of constructs” framework, we propose paths forward for studying Ind.EO credibly, consistent with, but distinct from, traditional firm-level EO. Finally, we outline a research agenda and discuss the contributions and potential implications for Ind.EO research across the wider entrepreneurship discipline.
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Few entrepreneurship researchers have focused on entrepreneurs as leaders, particularly in the initial stages of a new venture. We build on theories of authentic and transformational leadership to develop a model of how entrepreneurs exhibiting key leadership behaviors —trustworthiness, coachability, and passion —more successfully gain the support of critical stakeholders. We test the model in the angel investment context and examine how angels’ perception of entrepreneurs’ authentic transformational leadership behaviors impact angels’ evaluations of funding potential. Results indicate that the three authentic leadership behaviors mediate the relationships between personal characteristics of the entrepreneurs and evaluation of the funding potential.
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The growth of “incubators” as an economic development strategy for small businesses has exploded into a myriad of choices and options. This has confused community leaders and business people alike as to the appropriate approach for an incubator project. With such a diversity existing in the structure and purpose of incubators, a clear analysis of these new facilities would provide a better insight into understanding their services. This paper attempts to explain the incubator concept, examine they types of methods of incubator projects, and analyze the differences in services, structure, goals and results. A projected 150 incubators will be functional during 1986. This analysis may serve to understand the overall objective in incubator projects as they continue to be initiated.
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To sense and adapt to uncertainty by leveraging prior entrepreneurial knowledge is a critical ability. However, for many individuals, prior entrepreneurial knowledge is absent or underdeveloped. We investigate the ability of individuals without prior entrepreneurial knowledge to effectively adapt decision policies in response to feedback, while performing an entrepreneurial task. We model 10,000 “entrepreneurial decisions” nested within 217 individuals, to demonstrate how differences in metacognitive ability and feedback type promote (or alternatively impede) cognitive adaptability. Our findings suggest insights into the interplay between knowledge, learning, and cognition that are generalizable to activities and actions central to the entrepreneurial process.
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We developed and tested a model linking proactive personality and career success through a set of four behavioral and cognitive mediators. A 2-year longitudinal design with data from a sample of 180 full-time employees and their supervisors was used. Results from structural equation modeling showed that proactive personality measured at Time 1 was positively related to innovation, political knowledge, and career initiative, but not voice; all measured at Time 2. Innovation, political knowledge, and career initiative in turn had positive relationships with career progression (salary growth and the number of promotions during the previous 2 years) and career satisfaction. Interestingly, voice had a negative relationship with career progression. We discuss practical implications and future research directions for proactive personality, extra-role behavior, and careers.
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We examined the extent to which cognitive ability, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience predict decision-making performance prior to and after unforeseen changes in the task context. Seventy-three undergraduates made decisions on a series of 75 problems during a 3-hour computerized simulation. Unbeknownst to participants, the rules used in determining correct decisions changed after problems 25 and 50. Effects of the individual differences on decision-making performance became significantly stronger after the changes. Only cognitive ability explained variance in prechange performance. Individuals with higher cognitive ability made better decisions. After the change, the cognitive ability effect increased and the effects of Conscientiousness and Openness became statistically significant. As expected, those with high Openness made better decisions. Unexpectedly, those with low Conscientiousness made better decisions. Subsequent analyses revealed that this surprising effect for Conscientiousness was due to the traits reflecting dependability (i.e., order, dutiful-ness, deliberation) rather than volition (i.e., competence, achievement striving, self-discipline).
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Because of their importance in creating wealth—both personal and societal—entrepreneurs have long been the subject of intensive study. Past research has focused on important issues such as: Why do some people, but not others, recognize or create new opportunities? Why do some, but not others, try to convert their ideas and dreams into business ventures? And why, ultimately, are some entrepreneurs successful and others not?Efforts to answer these questions in terms of the personal characteristics of entrepreneurs generally yielded disappointing results: contrary to what informal observation suggests, entrepreneurs do not appear to differ greatly from nonentrepreneurs with respect to various aspects of personality. As a result, a growing number of researchers have recently adopted a different approach—one emphasizing the role of cognitive processes in entrepreneurship. This perspective suggests that valuable insights into the questions posed above may be obtained through careful comparison of the cognitive processes of entrepreneurs and other persons.Whereas informative research has already been conducted within this framework, the present study seeks to expand this developing perspective by building additional conceptual bridges between entrepreneurship research and the large, extant literature on human cognition. Basic research on human cognition suggests that our cognitive processes are far from totally rational; in fact, our thinking is often influenced by a number of sources of potential bias and error. It is suggested here that entrepreneurs often work in situations and under conditions that would be expected to maximize the impact of such factors. Specifically, they face situations that tend to overload their information-processing capacity and are characterized by high levels of uncertainty, novelty, emotion, and time pressure. Together, these factors may increase entrepreneurs’ susceptibility to a number of cognitive biases.Several cognitive mechanisms that may exert such effects and that have not previously been considered in detail in the literature on entrepreneurship are examined. These include: counterfactual thinking—the effects of imagining what might have been; affect infusion—the influence of current affective states on decisions and judgments; attributional style—tendencies by individuals to attribute various outcomes to either internal or external causes; the planning fallacy—strong tendencies to underestimate the amount of time needed to complete a given project or the amount of work that can be achieved in a given time; and self-justification—the tendency to justify previous decisions even if they result in negative outcomes. Each mechanism is described, and specific hypotheses concerning its potential impact on the thinking of entrepreneurs are proposed.A final section of the article touches briefly on methods for testing hypotheses concerning these mechanisms and explores the implications of this cognitive perspective for future entrepreneurship research. This section emphasizes the fact that a cognitive perspective can provide researchers in the field with several new conceptual tools and may also facilitate the development of practical procedures for assisting entrepreneurs.
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The role of incubator organizations, those organizations where entrepreneur work before starting their own firms, is examined. Using a sample of 161 new, growth-oriented firms, the relationships of the new companies to their incubator organizations are considered, as well as the characteristics of the incubator organizations. ¶The findings have implications for prospective entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs in most industry categories do not change geographic location and, in most technical industries, usually start businesses related to what they did before. An individual's decision to join a particular organization results in a particular geographic location and in knowledge about a particular industry. The would-be founder located in an unpromising geographic area and getting experience in an industry offering few opportunities for company start-ups is unlikely to be able to start a growth-oriented technical firm, regardless of personal motivation. However, the prospective founder of a nontechnical firm appears to be less tied to the experience gained in an incubator organization.
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Effects on opportunity recognition of three social sources of opportunity-related information (mentors, informal industry networks, participation in professional forums) were investigated. Results indicated that all three sources had direct, positive effects on opportunity recognition by entrepreneurs. In addition, the effects of two sources (mentors and professional forums) were mediated by schema strength, while effects of the third source (informal industry networks) were mediated by self-efficacy. Results are consistent with theories of opportunity recognition that emphasize the role of information and cognitive processes, and suggest that two social sources of information not systematically investigated in previous research–mentors and participation in professional forums–can assist entrepreneurs in identifying opportunities for new ventures.