Entrepreneurial Resilience

Abstract

Given that entrepreneurs regularly face challenges in the process of starting a new venture, their ability to adapt and respond to adversity is of great interest to entrepreneurship researchers. Hence, entrepreneurship scholars have begun to build on and extend the idea of individual-level, psychological resilience in the domain of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurial resilience includes the processes entrepreneurs utilize to develop and deploy their capabilities in order to adapt and respond to adversity encountered in their role as an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurial resilience may be conceptualized as a set of capabilities, as a process, and as an outcome. The idea of entrepreneurial resilience as a set of capabilities implies that resilience is comprised of certain psychological and behavioral capacities or tendencies that allow an entrepreneur to overcome adversity. Entrepreneurial resilience as a process is the demonstration of those capabilities in action and is exhibited as entrepreneurs encounter and then recover from a stressor. Finally, entrepreneurial resilience as an outcome is often conceptualized as a lack of negative outcomes from an adverse or stressful event. Research in entrepreneurship has begun to explore each of these conceptualizations of resilience. Importantly, resilience capabilities have been connected with a greater likelihood of venture survival. Additionally, research has demonstrated that entrepreneurial action may be an important tool that individuals use to overcome persistent adversity. Future research is needed to clarify how entrepreneurs both develop and deploy their capabilities and resources to achieve positive outcomes in the face of challenges. The remaining questions related to the nature of entrepreneurial resilience make this domain a promising field for continuing scholarship.