Entrepreneurship and learning

• Published in: Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Regional Development pp. 248 - 282
• Main Author: Mitra, Jay
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: United Kingdom Routledge 2020; Taylor & Francis Group
• Edition: 2
• Subjects: Entrepreneurial Learning; National Innovation Systems; Learning Assets; Firm Specific Assets; Venture Creation; Knowledge Spillovers; SME Inter-nationalisation; Competency Building; Collective Learning; Social Enterprise UK; Knowledge Acquisition; Entrepreneurial Firms; Socio-political Legitimacy; Cognitive Legitimacy; USA's Leadership; Opportunity Identification Process; Competency Leveraging; Firm Formation; SME Policy; Entrepreneurial Skills; Uncertainty Avoidance; Organisational Learning; Informal Learning; Individual SME
• ISBN: 9781138685611; 1138685615; 9781138685628; 1138685623
• DOI: 10.4324/9781315543130-8

In this chapter the reader is offered a critical introduction to the learning process in entrepreneurship and innovation development. It considers how learning enables the optimisation of the efforts of entrepreneurs and their search for innovative solutions to problems. This requires an understanding of the relationship between learning and entrepreneurship and how the different components of organisational, environmental and individual learning produce possibilities for entrepreneurial learning. The chapter engages the reader with novel approaches to entrepreneurial decision-making by individual entrepreneurs and organisations to develop competencies and capabilities for delivering innovative outcomes. The act of creating a new venture or that of growing an innovative organisation is a learning process. It suggests a movement from a previous position marked by an accumulated stock of knowledge, experience and ideas to another level characterised by a difference in that position which confers some advantage, gain and insight. The centrality of the learning process is drawn from the contention that entrepreneurship has distinctive value if organisations and individuals 'learn' to move from one point to another in terms of generating new products/services, delivering new values, redefining organisational boundaries and creating new firms. Understanding the different forms of learning process, is a complex process. Innovation is often the result of interaction of various subjects, technologies, people and organisations, and it is the learning that is derived from such interaction which underpins innovative activity. Most influential writers on the topic of learning organisations differentiate between individual and collective learning.