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ENTR 207 – Entrepreneurs & Entrepreneurship
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Entrepreneurs typically learn from failure
Florian Moron ID: 33265062
Lancaster University Management School
Michaelmas Term 2012

Entrepreneurs typically learn from failure.
“Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success”. In this respect, Dale Carnegie (2010) argues that one of the most important lessons from success is failure. It is interesting that Carnegie talks of failure being in everybody’s past, indicating that failure is not a process confined to the entrepreneur. The research undertaken for this paper has been concentrated on four different previous researches of Cope (2009), Ucbasaran et al. (2009, 2012) and Cardon et al. (2009). Attitudes toward failure are not homogeneous among entrepreneurs, however those who have experienced it are disputably more prepared for the battle of entrepreneurship. As a result it is beyond question to understand the deeply affective dimension of failure that include the loss of the venture and the personal loss. Cope’s paper (2009) stresses that learning from failure is not automatic or instantaneous but it represents an essential prerequisite for learning (Wilkinson and Mellahi, 2005, cited by Cope 2009). The learning entrepreneurial experience of failure is articulated trough a major “grief recovery” composed of three interconnected learning components: an initial hiatus followed by a critical reflection and finally, a reflective action (Cope, 2003). Thus, there are different ways in which learning from failure can be usefully applied and gives new opportunity of future success.

Today’s major view of failure is seen as something to be avoided since it can generate “vicious cycles of