Entrepreneurial Resilience

Abstract

Entrepreneurial resilience is an important ingredient for entrepreneurial success. Resilience allows entrepreneurs recognize that instability and uncertainty can be pervasive and disruption can derail even the best of firms. We discuss entrepreneurial resilience from four interconnected perspectives of the spiral effect of resilience on not just the survival and growth of firms – internal – but also the entrepreneurial ecosystem – external. Resilience is activated and detected in the moment of crisis. Tools such as bricolage, social and spiritual capital, improvisation, open innovation, strategic innovation, risk preparedness, crisis planning and simulation, learning from failures, social interaction and relationships, goodwill and reputation, personal networks can be activated to enhance entrepreneurial resilience. We note that entrepreneurs requires a dose of ambidexterity, improvisation, bricolage, planning, and high reliability to stimulate entrepreneurial resilience. While entrepreneurial resilience has been presented in linear model - notably as the ability of entrepreneurs to anticipate potential threats, to cope effectively with unexpected events, and to adapt to changes in order to become stronger than before, our work position entrepreneurial resilience as configurations - a mix of factors necessary and sufficient to build resilient entrepreneurs.