The personality configuration of mentors and mentees is important in understanding mentoring outcomes. While the best mentors appear to have higher degrees of agreeableness and conscientiousness, entrepreneurs generally score lower on agreeableness and have higher degrees of narcissism, a personality trait that could be detrimental to mentoring. We investigated the interaction of narcissism with two traits from the Big Five Inventory, namely agreeableness and conscientiousness, to see how this interaction influenced learning from the relationship of mentee entrepreneurs. Our findings suggest that mentee narcissism negatively influences learning, and mentor agreeableness mitigates the negative effects on mentee learning. These findings show certain beneficial personality configurations in entrepreneurial mentoring and provide elements to consider in managerial practice when pairing mentors and mentees in this context.

Recent contributions to the literature on small firm growth have been marked by a growing sense of frustration with the state-of-the-art and what it implicates in both theory and policy. In short, while growth episodes appear relatively common, a tiny proportion of firms sustain growth and 'scale'. This calls into question the very basis upon which policies seeking to target high growth firms (HGFs) rest. In addition, it cautions against perspectives that view growth as the essence of entrepreneurship. In this paper, we argue that understanding the frequency of growth episodes and the rarity of sustained growth requires a better understanding of growth consequences. To this end, we describe case study evidence from ambitious entrepreneurs whose firms experienced an episode of high growth followed by longer periods of mixed performance. Our goal is to shed light on how the experience of growing affects further growth. Our data provide initial insights into the mechanisms linking past growth to growth motivations and into the ways in which past growth lays the foundations for future performance.

COVID-19 wreaked havoc on public health and the global economy. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) were hit especially hard. In this research note, we test the ability of dynamic capabilities (DCs) to predict SME performance during the pandemic. Based on our analysis of data from a survey conducted in the United States, we find that DCs meaningfully predicted both operational levels and revenue. Furthermore, while the empirical literature suggests that SME size is positively related to DC efficacy, we found that this effect was reversed during COVID-19, as the positive link between DCs and performance was stronger for smaller SMEs.

This article investigates how start-ups have been affected by, and have responded to, the COVID-19 pandemic by analysing interview data from 32 Australian start-ups during Australia's second wave of COVID-19. A framework and visualisation were developed, capturing unexplored heterogeneity within these start-ups, depending whether the emphasis was upon opportunities or adversity, and the type and extent of business model changes. Six start-up types were identified: stable beneficiaries, business-as-usual continuers, digital adjusters, adversity survivors, opportunity graspers and lemonade makers. The findings suggest that most start-ups responded to the crisis through business model changes because of crisis-induced opportunities and crisis-induced adversity The anaysis found that the interplay between firm size and crisis influences whether start-ups focus on business model adaptation or business model innovation or a combination of both We thus contribute to the literature on business models, crisis management and a newly emerging field focusing on the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for start-ups.

We are grateful to Professors Rebecca Reuber and Eileen Fischer for contributing our 2022 annual review article. This insightful review explores an issue of great contemporary importance regarding the relationship between entrepreneurial activities and social media platforms. Whilst there is much popular and media commentary regarding the opportunities such platforms offer for entrepreneurship, we lack informed, academic reflection upon the role and influence of such platforms for both good and ill. Hence, this review article is timely in identifying current practices and raising important issues for future research. Our thanks to the authors for their valuable contribution to the ISBJ. Entrepreneurs create digital platforms which, in turn, facilitate entrepreneurial behaviours of others, the platform users. An important start-up activity is developing the mechanisms to govern user participation. While prior literature has provided insights on the governance of innovation platforms and exchange platforms, it has shed little light on the governance of social media platforms. In this review, we synthesize the emerging literature on diverse social media platforms, focussing on four types of governance mechanisms: those that regulate user behaviour, those related to user identification and stature, those that structure relationships among users and those that direct user attention. We highlight the implications of this body of literature for entrepreneurship scholars.

Given the COVID-19 crisis, the importance of space in the global economic system has emerged as critical in a hitherto unprecedented way. Even as large-scale, globally operating digital platform enterprises find new ways to thrive in the midst of a crisis, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) nestled in local economies have proven to be fragile to shocks, causing countless local economies to unravel in the face of severe challenges to survival. Here, we discuss the role of entrepreneurship in re-building local economies that are more resilient. Specifically, we take a spatial perspective and highlight how the COVID-19 crisis has uncovered problems in the current tendency for thin contextualisation and promotion of globalisation. Based on this critique, we outline new perspectives for thinking about the relationship between entrepreneurship, resilience and local economies. Here, a particular emphasis is given to resilience building through deeply contextualised policies and research, localised flows of products and labour, and the diversification of local economies.

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic is an external shock that has disrupted the foundations of everyday life. For cosmopolitan entrepreneurs, the impact is even more decisive as it confronts their core values and jeopardises their identities, ways of working and the lifestyles they cherish. Cosmopolitans are individuals who identify themselves as citizens of the world and voluntarily move from country to country in pursuit of self-fulfilment in both life and work. Cosmopolitan entrepreneurs are future-oriented and open to the world and the opportunities it may provide. Beyond securing, maintaining and improving their professional and/or economic positions, their mobility is an elementary part of the cosmopolitan life itself, something they find attractive, interesting and stimulating. Thus, a cosmopolitan entrepreneur's business is often non-location-bound to enable continued mobility. With our interview-based research, we shed light on how COVID-19 has changed the lives of Finnish-born cosmopolitan entrepreneurs, discussing what they feel about the changes and how they see their future.

This commentary argues that scaling fast growth firms drive economic development, even in recessionary periods. While the coronavirus induced the 'Great Lockdown' and its aftermath poses particular challenges, we argue that the crisis presents the entrepreneurial scholarly community with an opportunity to re-orientate our research. Rather than more narratives of business success in the face of adversity, the Great Lockdown presents us with a fresh opportunity to examine how scaling is affected by context, by luck and by the porous nature of business growth. In so doing, our hope is that it will encourage our community to adopt a more proactive agenda to support policy makers and entrepreneurs.

As COVID-19 spreads across the globe, a common public policy response has been to enforce the temporary closure of non-essential business activity. In some countries, governments have underwritten a proportion of the wage income for staff forced to furlough or broadened their welfare systems to accommodate newly laid off workers or small business owners. While these actions are helpful, they do not explicitly address the lack of sales trading activity on business income and cash balances. In commentary, we identify what types of businesses have been increasing their cash holdings in the lead up to COVID-19 as an indication of what types of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are most at risk if the lockdown extends for a protracted period of time. We find that only 39% of the of businesses were bolstering their cash balances leading up to COVID-19 which suggests that 61% of businesses may run out of cash, including 8.6% that had no retained earnings whatsoever with micro firms at particular risk. The importance of precautionary saving for SMEs is critical to enhance resilience when Black Swan events occur.

COVID-19 is unique in the severity of its impact as it is a humanitarian disaster that has caused both a supply and a demand shock to the global economic system. It has disproportionately affected women entrepreneurs as their firms are younger and smaller. In this commentary, we contend that while all businesses must pivot their business models in times of tumultuous change, simultaneously reducing risk and seizing new opportunities, this is particularly difficult for women entrepreneurs, whose businesses are concentrated in the industry sectors most severely affected by the economic shutdown. We draw on recent survey data from the Diana International Research Institute (DIRI) to identify business model pivots in women-owned businesses, and conclude by offering a set of gendered future research questions.

Within this short commentary, we explore the notion of pivoting; following major exogenous shocks, firms often contemplate business model pivoting where they change product or service offerings to capitalise on emerging opportunities. We assess the potential bright and dark sides of pivoting for new and existing firms in regard to quality of opportunities, fit with current capabilities and potential costs. The extant literature suggests that two forms of opportunities exist, arbitrage and innovation. We discern that post-shock, new firms may be better positioned to pursue arbitrage opportunities, whereas existing firms should target innovation. Existing firms may have more complications when pursuing arbitrage due to resource embeddedness and stakeholder obligations, and have a greater ability to innovate with an established resource base. Conversely, new firms can capitalise on arbitrage due to lack of embeddedness, as arbitrage requires a significant investment in opportunity selection. In addition, we offer suggestions for future research in regard to the current pandemic and more broadly, exogenous shocks.

This commentary explores the manner in which the current COVID-19 crisis is affecting key sources of entrepreneurial finance in the United Kingdom. We posit that the unique relational nature of entrepreneurial finance may make it highly susceptible to such a shock owing to the need for face-to-face interaction between investors and entrepreneurs. The article explores this conjecture by scrutinising a real-time data source of equity investments. Our findings suggest that the volume of new equity transactions in the United Kingdom has declined markedly since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. It appears that seed finance is the main type of entrepreneurial finance most acutely affected by the crisis, which typically goes to the most nascent entrepreneurial start-ups facing the greatest obstacles obtaining finance. Policy makers can utilise these real-time data sources to help inform their strategic policy interventions to assist the firms most affected by crisis events.