Entrepreneurship – Decision Making, Learning and Failure; Studies of the lived experience and a conceptual analysis of a polysemous construct

Thesis Defence
Entrepreneurship – Decision Making, Learning and Failure; Studies of the lived experience and a conceptual analysis of a polysemous construct

Diarmuid Smyth, PhD candidate in the Global Executive Ph.D., will publicly defend his thesis.

December 3, 2024
02:00 p.m. (CET)
ESCP Montparnasse Campus or Online

Attend the defence

Abstract

This thesis is a series of studies on decision making, learning and failure in entrepreneurship. The studies use the lens of the lived experience of elite informants to generate data used in the first two papers. The first study examines decision making and the selection perspectives of investors from the entrepreneurs’ side of the table. The paper finds that nonpecuniary benefits are important element in the selection but only post the first venture experience which is negative, and the entrepreneurs change their selection criteria from this experience.

The second paper asks the question of what successful entrepreneurs learn from a venture failure experience. This paper also uses elite informants as the source of the data collection. 68 failure events were documented. Key findings of the research include the specific ‘what’ aspect of learning from failure may explain the variability in the results of previous scholarly research by bridging the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ of learning from failure. Additionally, four lessons on the failure experience were identified as being important elements of the subsequent success narratives of the participants. The first of these the Hamartia lesson incorporates the reflective requirement for learning to occur but recognises that this reflection requires a paradigm shift into the nature of the entrepreneurs’ journey.

The third paper follows on the focus on failure and focuses on building a greater insight into and understanding of the term ‘failure’ in the entrepreneurial context. A literature review and a conceptual analysis is conducted. A taxonomy of the various failure concepts is developed to help improve the understanding of this polysemous construct. The construct of failure and uncertainty is the key theme across the three studies. This thesis contributes to the entrepreneurial failure literature including its concept and learning from it by elite informants.

Jury