Towards Understanding Startup Product Development as Effectual Entrepreneurial Behaviors

Experience and Pivoting in Entrepreneurial Product Development

Problem definition: Pivoting is a significant shift from the current product under development to an alternative opportunity. Pivoting is strongly advocated in the popular press and commonly used in entrepreneurial product development. However, a high fraction of startups that pivot still fail subsequently, since many entrepreneurs chase pivots that are ultimately not fruitful. We explore how an entrepreneur’s level of experience influences their decision to pivot. Experienced entrepreneurs, possessing a clearer perception of potential obstacles and opportunities, tend to exhibit reduced overconfidence. Methodology/results: We develop a decision-theoretic model to analyze the entrepreneurial choice regarding pivoting, while accounting for the overconfidence, and market and pivot opportunity uncertainties. We show that lack of experience, i.e., a higher level of overconfidence, can systematically influence the pivot decisions. The effect of overconfidence on pivot decision depends on the market uncertainty of the pivot opportunity relative to that of the already initiated product. More specifically, we show that novice (more overconfident) entrepreneurs are likely to make radical risky pivots, whereas experienced (less overconfident) entrepreneurs are more likely to make safe pivots. We find that the dominant development errors for inexperienced founders relate to pivoting and persisting when faced with risky and safe pivots, respectively. Furthermore, we show that if pivoting can be postponed until after the product launch, novice founders are much more likely to postpone safe pivots than experienced founders. We also explore the effects of different types of experience on the entrepreneur’s pivoting decisions. Managerial implications: Our results can benefit entrepreneurs in deciding how to set the duration of their supply chain contracts, choose the types of employees to hire, and select appropriate mentors, depending on the experience level of the founders and their likely pivot behavior. For startup incubators and accelerators, our results indicate what type of training programs to provide for entrepreneurs when accounting for their experience level.

Journal Business Administration: Entrepreneurship & Creative Industry

Unveiling Business Startups: A Systematic Literature Review of Challenges and Strategies

Launching a new business is a complex and dynamic process that requires entrepreneurs to overcome significant challenges through effective strategic responses, promoting sustainability and growth. Prior research has identified various challenges and strategies related to business startups. However, these studies have generally examined challenges and strategies separately, with limited integration of these key aspects into a cohesive framework that spans organizational, regional, and sectoral levels. This study addresses this gap through a systematic literature review by identifying, selecting, synthesizing, and integrating key challenges and strategies of start-ups into a unified model applicable across diverse contexts. Using a systematic review and document analysis guided by inclusion and exclusion criteria and the PRISMA framework, 79 scholarly articles published between 2020 and 2026 were systematically analyzed to generate new insights. The review highlights key challenges, including government policies and regulations, high start-up costs, intense competition, psychological pressures, marketing and customer acquisition, human resource management, and environmental uncertainty. These challenges create complex strategic demands, underscoring the need for effective strategies that help entrepreneurs manage and sustain their businesses. The study also identifies various strategies, including entrepreneurial traits, business planning, technology use, marketing tactics, financial support, research and development, strategic management, ethical practices, networking, and government assistance, which have been employed across different contexts to enhance survival, sustainability, profitability, competitiveness, and long-term success. Overall, the study suggests future research directions to further explore business start-up challenges and strategies across various contexts using comparative and context-sensitive approaches to advance theory and practice.

Developing Entrepreneurial Talent for Competitive Start-Ups: A Systematic Literature Review

Entrepreneurial talent is increasingly treated as a developable resource for start-up formation and competitiveness, but evidence remains fragmented across entrepreneurship education, founder competence, human capital, digital entrepreneurship, team composition, and entrepreneurial ecosystems. This systematic literature review examines how entrepreneurial talent is conceptualized, developed, activated, and associated with start-up outcomes. A PRISMA-guided, Scopus-bounded search of titles, abstracts, and keywords was completed on 30 June 2026. The search identified 346 records; after the publication-period, document-type, language, and scope criteria were applied, 125 English-language journal articles published from 2020 onward formed the formal review corpus. Quantitative, qualitative, mixed-method, conceptual, bibliometric, review, case-study, and experimental designs were synthesized narratively. Because these designs and outcomes were heterogeneous, quality was interpreted descriptively and claims were calibrated to evidence maturity rather than combined into a single cross-design score. Four domains emerged: entrepreneurial-talent conceptualization; education and talent development; start-up outcomes; and ecosystem, digital, and contextual enablement. The synthesis defines entrepreneurial talent at the individual level as a developable portfolio of knowledge, skills, abilities, experience, motivation, self-efficacy, resilience, and digital fluency, while distinguishing founding-team competence, venture-level dynamic capability, and ecosystem enablement as analytically separate but interacting levels. Evidence supports a stage-contingent pattern from opportunity recognition and experimentation to commercialization, survival, and scaling, but many studies remain cross-sectional or rely on intention and readiness measures. The review therefore proposes, rather than validates, a multilevel framework linking development, activation, team complementarity, resource orchestration, ecosystem conditions, and objective venture outcomes. Findings should be interpreted as Scopus-bounded and call for longitudinal, multilevel, and outcome-based research.

Open Innovation Practices in Startups Transitioning to the Circular Economy: A Systematic Review and Proposed Framework

Due to their innovative potential and contributions to advancing circular business models, startups play a significant role in the transition toward the circular economy (CE). Yet, despite their agility and focus on creating and delivering value aligned with CE principles, startups also often face specific barriers and challenges when developing circular solutions. One possible way to overcome these obstacles is through the application of open innovation (OI) concepts. However, there is a gap in the literature regarding integrated studies on how OI can support startups innovating toward the CE. The present study aimed to contribute to this understanding by investigating the topic through a systematic literature review, followed by a qualitative content analysis. From an OI perspective, the findings of the study suggest a set of managerial practices, along with the identification and analysis of actors and tools that startups can use to support CE development and implementation. Finally, an integrative framework is proposed that may guide startups in adopting OI to support CE implementation.

How Lean Startup Practices Affect Corporate Innovation

This research adopts data of A-share listed firms from 2012 to 2024 and applies fixed-effect regression models. The results show that core lean startup tools including minimum viable products, rapid iteration and customer feedback can greatly lift corporate innovation outcomes. Mechanism tests reveal two parallel working paths of this method. First, it raises the level of entrepreneurial bricolage measured by the asset structure change index, which drives creative rearrangement of existing resources. Second, it improves the sufficiency of internal cash flow, calculated as the ratio of net operating cash flow to total assets, so firms gain stable self-owned capital to support innovation. Heterogeneity tests prove this positive effect is stronger in eastern regions, high-tech industries and non-regulated industries. Robustness checks, such as adding city fixed effects, removing samples from municipalities and dropping observations collected during pandemic years, all support the core conclusions. This study identifies two mediating paths that boost innovation, expands the practical application scope of lean startup theories, and offers practical references for innovation management under resource shortages.