Entrepreneurship Theories

Resilience Theory: The Art of Getting Back Up What is the single most important trait for a founder? Many argue it isn't intelligence or funding, but Resilience . Resilience is defined as the ability to recover quickly from difficulties—to "get up after you fall down," whether physically, psychologically, financially, or socially. Because entrepreneurs typically face numerous failures on their way to eventual success, resilience is expected to be a critical capability. More Than Just "Toughness" The idea of resilience is appealing because it soothes the failing entrepreneur. It reinforces the belief that continuing on despite setbacks is better than withdrawing. In the startup world, this is often manifested as the "Pivot" —the ability to change directions rapidly as reality comes into focus, rather than quitting. Evidence from the Field Academic research supports the link between resilience and business survival: Ayala and Manzano ...

Sometimes called an employee spinout, private sector spinouts are a very common form of entrepreneurship involving employees turned entrepreneurs.  As it turns out, the majority of founders have previous work experience to drawn on and many use ideas that they encountered while working for a former employer (Sørensen & Fassiotto, 2011). An employing organization is like a fountain for an employee-turned-entrepreneur to drink from. According to Yeganegi et al. (2024; p. 6) a private sector spinout is a startup that is: "an independent venture, founded by a recent former employee (or group of former employees) of an existing firm (i.e., parent), that transfers significant valuable resources from the parent to the new venture." For example, Zoom is a spinout of Cisco because its founder and many early employees were formerly Cisco engineers, many of them part of its Webex division which also competes in the virtual meeting space. Spinouts are expected to...