ENTREPRENEURIAL VENTURE GROWTH: THE INTERPLAY OF COGNITION AND LEARNING IN ENTREPRENEURIAL SUCCESS

Abstract

Entrepreneurial venture growth is one of the core domains of scholarly inquiry in entrepreneurship. Despite the high failure rate, thousands of individuals decide to start ventures, though only a few achieve major success. A cognitive perspective may provide important insights into key aspects of the entrepreneurial process. At the same time, though an entrepreneur has the necessary cognition to prosper, entrepreneurial learning becomes important as a moderator in this relationship. This study has three objectives, two main hypotheses and four sub-hypotheses. It was a cross-sectional survey utilising 250 entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka. Findings of the study suggest that the secret behind successful entrepreneurs is that they may possess better-developed cognitive frameworks for accomplishing their tasks. Further, learning indeed helps entrepreneurs to acquire more refined cognitive frameworks for day-to-day business decisions and actions. The article concludes with implications for theory and practice, as well as directions for further research.