As the saying goes, failure is the mother of success. Learning from failure takes on added importance in the entrepreneurial context, since entrepreneurial endeavor is fraught with uncertainty and failure. However, it turns out some entrepreneurs learn less from failures than others. In an article entitled Narcissism and Learning from Entrepreneurial Failure published in Journal of Business Venturing (included in the Social Science Citation Index, SSCI), Dr. Yiran Liu, leading author and lecturer from Tianjin University School of Education proposed that a narcissistic personality can create cognitive and motivational obstacles to learning. Professor Yong Li from the University of Nevada, Professor Xiling Hao from Anhui University of Finance and Economics, and Professor Yuli Zhang from Nankai University also contributed to the study.
With a survey sample of founders of 180 startups in China, who have experienced a recent entrepreneurial failure, researchers found that highly narcissistic entrepreneurs reported less learning from a prior failure and that the inhibiting effect of narcissism on reported learning from failure is more pronounced when social costs of failure are higher.
Focusing on the topic of learning in the dualistic relationship between teaching and learning, this study has important implications for cultivating an entrepreneurial spirit and promoting entrepreneurship education, which also facilitates the development of local entrepreneurship. This research is supported by a grant of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71532005; Uncertainty, Entrepreneurial Decision-Making and Behavior Rationality) and a grant by China's Ministry of Education (18YJC630107; Narcissism and Behavioral Change in Serial Entrepreneurship Context).
The Journal of Business Venturing is a top tier management journal with an impact factor of 6.000 in 2018. It ranks 10th out of 140 management journals and 1st among entrepreneurship management journals.
By Liu Yiran
Editors: Eva Yin & Doris Harrington
