Habitual Entrepreneurship: Experiences and Cases

The image that scholars hold about entrepreneurs and the process of entrepreneurship is slowly changing. From a rather simplistic view in which entrepreneurship was viewed as a "one time event", there is now an increased recognition of a breed of entrepreneurs, who repeatedly set-up/acquire and exit several businesses in a relatively short span of time. Entrepreneurship is no longer a single and one-time only event. These "habitual entrepreneurs" (Flores-Romero, 2004) are a class apart – marked by amazing risk taking capacity, a stirring desire to create new companies and an uncanny ability to quickly pull together the elements of a successful start-up. William A Sahlman, a Harvard business school professor, who tracks the adventures of these repeat entrepreneurs, opines, "It s a rare, rare person who has the ability to do two things successfully… Typically venture capitalists score big about 15% of the time. While the success rate for repeaters might be double that." This book "Habitual Entrepreneurship" seeks to explore the fascinating dynamics of the mind, mettle and method of habitual entrepreneurs (including its subsets, serial and portfolio entrepreneurs). The book defines the types of entrepreneurial talent with respect to the nature, processes and attributes of habitual entrepreneurs. The book highlights qualities such as compulsion "to start’, ‘to build" and "sell" successful businesses. This book features a few serial and portfolio entrepreneurs who have heard a ‘Bugle call’ that not all of us can hear. New business formation, dynamics of entrepreneurial teams and experiences of habitual entrepreneurs across the world depicted in this book provides a comprehensive study of habitual entrepreneurs.