The Antecedents of Entrepreneurial Success: A Mixed Methods Approach

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to understand: (1) the main themes that appear to contribute to entrepreneurial success, (2) the various combinations of antecedents that can lead to entrepreneurial success, and; (3) the role that travel plays in entrepreneurial success. We first use a qualitative methodology to assess the themes that emerge in our conversations with 14 highly-successful Canadian entrepreneurs. The main categories that emerged from our interviews that contribute to entrepreneurial success involve: learning, travel, adversity quotient, and mentorship. From these results, we conduct a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) and find that the input variables that were most important to entrepreneurial success were: learning, experiencing failure, learning from mentors, and adversity quotient. The contributions to knowledge of this research are twofold. First, we show that travel is an important construct to entrepreneurial success, which is significant as travel has largely been omitted from the entrepreneurship literature. Second, we show that entrepreneurial success is dependent on a complex combination of variables of varying levels of importance.