The Impact of Negative Knowledge to Develop Rescue from Entrepreneurial Failure Competencies: An Intervention Study an the Upper-secondary Level

Despite the enthusiasm for entrepreneurship, the odds are stacked against start-ups: They suffer a disproportionate failure rate in both boom times and bad times. Statistical evidence shows that half of start-ups exit the market in their first five years of existence. This reality calls for more than the legendary need for achievement, resilience, and risk taking propensity usually associated with entrepreneurs.

Launching a new business venture necessitates a can do attitude since entrepreneurs must be convinced that the opportunity they are pursuing will find market acceptance. In other words, entrepreneurs must have a "sense of success" (SoS). But they also need to acquire knowledge about potential pitfalls and competences to deal with difficulties in all areas and at various stages of the start-up process. That means that they must exhibit a "sense of failure" (SoF). Whereas the SoS has long been recognized in both academic and practical terms, there are not many pointers to the SoF.

The purpose of our study is to posit that nascent entrepreneurs should develop both a competence dealing with success but also a competence preventing and treating failure, a "Sense of Success" and a "Sense of Failure". Both are to be modelled and measured. In this study we focus on SoF, a concept influencing a specific form of problem solving competence, namely to "Rescue an Enterprise from Failure" (REF).