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Introduction
Despite much being known about the economic, individual, and environmental factors that contribute to entrepreneurial success, its exact constituents, how it can be measured, and indicators for its achievement are not generally agreed in the extant literature. Baron and Henry (2011) suggest this lack of clarity in this core concept is an issue for entrepreneurship scholars and one worthy of detailed investigation.
Our research explores “entrepreneurial success” from the perspective of the successful entrepreneur. Entrepreneurial success is a construct that lacks a clear definition, yet there is agreement that society benefits from successful entrepreneurship (Casson, 2003), and so entrepreneurial success is an important concept to understand. Baron and Henry (2011, p. 261) observe the term is more frequently used to indicate the achievement of organization level variables, but note an increasing tendency to include the effect entrepreneurial activity has on entrepreneurs (“their attitudes personal and social adjustment, health”) as part of its measurement. By implication, including variables in the measurement of entrepreneurial success informs the definition of the term.
It can be argued that because society and scholarship agree entrepreneurial success exists, we should be able to capture and measure it, and therefore have a good understanding of it. Yet there is diversity in both the measurement and identification of achievement indicators for entrepreneurial success, suggesting its presence can be dependent on individual perspective. Clarifying the construct may assist identifying when it is present or has been achieved, and the indicators that can facilitate the measurement of it.
A measure of entrepreneurial success may enable identification of current and future successful ventures, and improve public policies that target the success rate of start-ups (Fried and Tauer, 2009). Furthermore, knowing the type of individual who can achieve entrepreneurial success may have important implications for efficiently allocating resources and minimizing the costs of entrepreneurial failure (Caliendo and Kritikos, 2008).
Our research aims to contribute to the body of knowledge that identifies and examines entrepreneurial success. We attempt to address a gap in the literature by conceptualizing the construct from the perspective of successful entrepreneurs, and use these insights to develop indicators which we then subject to factor analysis.
We proceed as follows. First we briefly review literature on entrepreneurial success and failure and present the results...