Entrepreneurial resilience: a biographical analysis of successful entrepreneurs

Abstract

To be sustainably successful, entrepreneurs need a resilience capacity that enables them to overcome critical situations and even emerge from failures and crises stronger than before. Although academic interest in the resilience concept has steadily grown in recent years, research on entrepreneurial resilience is still at a preliminary stage. It largely remains unclear what entrepreneurial resilience actually is, which elements it contains, and how it can be enhanced. To help filling this research gap, we provide a literature review and deduce a theoretical framework of entrepreneurial resilience. Furthermore, we analyze the biographies of eight highly resilient entrepreneurs. Based on a qualitative content analysis, we identify two situational (parents’ behavior and parents’ experience) and two process-related factors (entrepreneurial learning and experience and entrepreneur’s work attitudes and behaviors) that seem to have a great impact on the development of entrepreneurial resilience and success. As a result, our paper offers a useful starting point for future empirical studies and a successful management of resilience in the entrepreneurial context.