“Going the distance!” : a study of the relationship between entrepreneurial deliberate practice and firm performance

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is acknowledged to be a driving force in economic growth. Yet, around half of new ventures in Europe fail within the first five years of starting-up. This leads to growing interest concerning the effect of entrepreneurial experience on success. However, literature argues that experience does not translate into competence, and the concept of deliberate practice has instead been suggested to improve expertise. Deliberate practice is the engagement in prolonged, intense, effortful and highly-focused tasks with the intention to improve one’s performance. Deliberate practice has been associated with improving performance in various domains, such as in sports and music, and this study seeks to add to the limited empirical literature by exploring whether the same can be said in the domain of entrepreneurship. This study addresses two research questions: To what extent do entrepreneurs engage in deliberate practice to enhance their entrepreneurial expertise? and To what extent is entrepreneurial deliberate practice related to firm performance? Guided by a critical review of literature, an online survey was conducted with 103 entrepreneurs who answered questions related to their background, engagement in deliberate practice, and reported firm performance. A series of statistical tests were performed on the survey data to investigate the research questions. The results indicate that deliberate practice activities partially predict firm performance, as the activities of ‘mental simulation’ and ‘monitoring’ were found to have a significant positive effect on non-financial performance, and ‘monitoring’ also had a significant positive effect on overall performance, but no activities had a significant effect on financial performance. Further research is therefore needed to investigate how other factors (such as cognition or the environment) dilute the effects of entrepreneurial deliberate practice.