A Literature Review and Prospects on Serial Entrepreneurship

Abstract

Serial entrepreneurship refers to the process in which entrepreneurs establish several enterprises one after another. However, at any given moment, the serial entrepreneurs usually focus on the establishment and operation of a single enterprise. As a unique type of entrepreneurial activity, serial entrepreneurship provides an important research scenario in which scholars could explore the root of entrepreneurial success or failure among multiple entrepreneurial activities, the value of a certain entrepreneurial success or failure to subsequent entrepreneurial activities, and how entrepreneurship shapes entrepreneurs’ cognition. Therefore, the study of serial entrepreneurship has great theoretical value and becomes an important direction in entrepreneurship research, because it fills the gap of previous studies which only focus on a certain entrepreneurial process. Foreign scholars have paid much attention to serial entrepreneurship, while domestic researches are relatively backward. Thus, it is urgent to form the research framework and future direction of serial entrepreneurship to promote its development. This paper draws on the idea of grounded theory, codes and refines the literature on serial entrepreneurship, and systematically summarizes the core themes and main conclusions of the existing research. Firstly, this paper systematically summarizes five core themes, including: the characteristics of serial entrepreneurs; the formation of serial entrepreneurial intention; the identification, evaluation and exploitation of serial opportunities; the financing strategies of serial entrepreneurs; and the performance of serial entrepreneurship. Secondly, based on coding results, this paper systematically reviews the literature of each theme and forms the research framework of each theme. Thirdly, based on the five core themes, this paper summarizes the characteristics of serial entrepreneurs from three aspects: the uniqueness of serial entrepreneurs, the continuity of serial entrepreneurial activities, and the adaptability of the serial entrepreneurial context. Finally, this paper proposes six directions for future study, including: explore the formation mechanism of serial entrepreneurial intention; explore the internal mechanism of opportunity recognition behavior of serial entrepreneurs; explore the resource scheduling, utilization and reorganization of serial entrepreneurs; explore the learning mechanism of serial entrepreneurship; explore the decision-making mechanism of serial entrepreneurs in uncertain situations; explore the uniqueness of serial entrepreneurs from the perspective of neuroentrepreneurship. This study deeply analyzes the characteristics, motivations and behavioral laws of serial entrepreneurship, scientifically summarizes the core themes of serial entrepreneurship, systematically constructs the research framework of serial entrepreneurship, and puts forward three characteristics of serial entrepreneurship and future research directions. This paper is of great significance for promoting the research of serial entrepreneurship.