If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.

Business failure research has been the focus of renewed interest in the entrepreneurship field. It is complex, being both a sign of economic vibrancy and the source of great individual trauma. An understanding of these complexities is important to academics, practitioners and regulators. This monograph provides a review of the literature to date. It charts the emergence of business failure research in the finance literature through to its recent development within the contemporary entrepreneurship field. The multidiscipline nature of business failure research is explored through incorporation of studies from accountancy, information systems, social psychology, general management, economics and entrepreneurship. Research on the topic is diverse; the lack of a universally accepted definition of failure coupled with the absence of an underpinning theory has resulted in an expansive range of studies. The aim of this review is to provide a comprehensive and critical review of business failure research, bridge the gap between the various perspectives, and develop a cohesive understanding of the phenomena, upon which future studies can be based.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.In this book, the authors present a challenge for future research to build a stronger, more complete understanding of entrepreneurial phenomena. They argue that this more complete picture of entrepreneurial phenomena will likely come from scholars who undertake at least some trailblazing projects; from scholars who broaden the range of research questions, the potential outcomes of entrepreneurial action, and the selection and combination of research methods; and from researchers who avoid the endless debates about the margins of the field and its sub-fields or about whether one theoretical or philosophical lens is superior to another. This book offers suggestions for future research through a variety of topics including prosocial action, innovation, family business, sustainability and development, and the financial, social, and psychological costs of failure. It promises to make an important contribution to the development of the field and help academics, organizations, and society make useful contributions to the generation of entrepreneurial research.

Provides an in-depth examination of the psychological obstacles to learning from entrepreneurial failure and how these can be overcome.

Introducing the global mind-set changing the way we do business. In this fascinating book, global entrepreneurship expert Daniel Isenberg presents a completely novel way to approach business building—with the insights and lessons learned from a worldwide cast of entrepreneurial characters. Not bound by a western, Silicon Valley stereotype, this group of courageous and energetic doers has created a global and diverse mix of companies destined to become tomorrow’s leading organizations. Worthless, Impossible, and Stupid is about how enterprising individuals from around the world see hidden value in situations where others do not, use that perception to develop products and services that people initially don’t think they want, and ultimately go on to realize extraordinary value for themselves, their customers, and society as a whole. What these business builders have in common is a contrarian mind-set that allows them to create opportunities and succeed where others see nothing. Amazingly, this process repeats itself in one form or another countless times a day all over the world. From Albuquerque to Islamabad, you will travel with Isenberg to discover unusual yet practical insights that you can use in your own business. Meet the founders of Grameenphone in Bangladesh, PACIV in Puerto Rico, Sea to Table in New York, Actavis in Iceland, Studio Moderna in Slovenia, Hartwell Metals in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, Given Imaging in Israel, WildChina in China, and many others. You’ll be moved by the stories of these plucky start-ups—many of them fueled by adversity and, more often than not, by necessity. Great stories, stunning successes, crushing failures—they’re all here. What can we, in the East and West, learn from them? What can you learn—and what will these entrepreneurial stories, so compellingly told, inspire you to do? Let this book open doors for you where you once saw only walls. If you’ve ever felt the urge to turn a glimmer of an idea into something extraordinary, these stories are for you.

Entrepreneurs act in environments of great risk and high uncertainty, and as a result, failure is a common occurrence. For this volume, Professor Shepherd has made a judicious selection of published articles, which explore the antecedents to and potential outcomes of entrepreneurial failure. By understanding these causes and consequences, entrepreneurs may become better able to manage failure, to reduce its costs and to capitalize on its benefits. With an insightful original introduction by the editor, the book provides an authoritative guide to current scholarly debate in this topical area and lays a foundation for future study.

Leverage the power of failure in your organization Nobody wants to fail, but failure is a fact of life. Most of us treat it as a regrettable, even shameful, event best overlooked. In truth, failure can be a game-changing strategic resource that can help you and your organization achieve the greater success you crave. The Other "F" Word shows how successful leaders and teams are putting failure to work every day - to re-engage employees, spark innovation and accelerate growth. Authors Danner and Coopersmith - with their rare blend of senior-level executive experience, global advising, teaching acumen and cross-discipline perspective - share these valuable new practices, and show how they can improve results across your organization. Based on exclusive interviews with prominent leaders and insightful examples from their own in-depth work, the book features a practical seven-stage framework to liberate failure as a force to advance your leadership agenda. After all, everyone creates and confronts failure on a daily basis. Why not use it to your advantage? The Other "F" Word shows you how to: Start an open, productive conversation about failure across your organization Reduce the fear of failure that stifles initiative, creativity and engagement Anticipate, prepare for and respond to failure, so you can leverage it when it happens Harness failure as a catalyst to drive innovation, improve performance and strengthen culture Failure's like gravity – pervasive and powerful. Whether you're a leader or team member of a startup, a growing business, or an established enterprise, failure is today's lesson for tomorrow. Let The Other "F" Word show you how to apply this lesson and take your company where it needs to go.