eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

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Purpose:

Entrepreneurial success - and factors contributing to it - has been studied and benchmarked extensively through multiple articles and case studies. However, also entrepreneurial failure, as a natural sibling to the success phenomenon, has been taken under more intensive inspection during the past years. The purpose of this thesis was to first explore, and then shed light through data on how the choice of lean start-up method will affect the entrepreneurs' recovery from failure. With the main research question set on, "How lean start-up entrepreneurs recover from business failure - and what factors contribute to that?", this research adds unique value on our understanding on the complex phenomenon of failure recovery. It contributes to the existing failure literature by addressing a research gap on the recovery process and recovery rationales through the eyes of a lean start-up entrepreneur.

Research Design:

This research gap was addressed through a qualitative multi case study research with eight entrepreneur interviews, each from Finnish high technology start-ups, whom had encountered a business failure and had practiced lean start-up principles. The nature of the research was inductive, allowing the dynamic relationships to emerge from the narratives - the data - of the informants.

Findings and Contributions:

There existed no previous studies on the connection between lean start-up method and the failure recovery. This study gave novel information on how exceptionally well lean start-up entrepreneurs recover from business failures, how they manage to cope with the negative feelings through rational sense making, learn from the mistakes and continue on entrepreneurial ventures.