From critique to catalyst: How academic entrepreneurs transform negative feedback into pivots and performance
Loading...
Date
2025
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
This study examines how academic entrepreneurs refine business ideas in response to external critique and how these responses relate to performance.We develop a framework that links feedback (critique), business-idea changes (pivots), and performance, and test itusing detailed data on external stakeholder feedback,changes to the business idea's core and periphery, and commercialization outcomes in 316 academic-led teams. Wefind that academic entrepreneurs frequently modify their business idea's core in response to negative feedback, and that core changes—rather than peripheral ones—are positively associated with commercialization. Challenging the idea that all entrepreneurs are inertial, we find that academic entrepreneurs both actively embrace and benefitfrom changes to the business idea's core. By tracing thefeedback-response dynamics of business idea components,our study adds granularity to research on pivoting
Description
Keywords
Academic entrepreneurship, Business idea development, Entrepreneurial resilience, entrepreneurial strategy, Failure, Leanstartup method, Organizational learning, Venture performance