From Negative Emotions to Entrepreneurial Mindset: A Model of Learning through Experiential Entrepreneurship Education

Negative experiences are pervasive and consequential in entrepreneurship: on the one hand, they have the potential to unlock higher-order learning; on the other, they can lead an entrepreneur to retreat. This presents a tension for experiential entrepreneurship education: how to expose students to negative experiences to promote their learning while mitigating the risks of this exposure. We investigate this puzzle through a longitudinal, inductive field study of undergraduate students in a yearlong experiential entrepreneurship course. We find that students experienced an array of circumstances that triggered negative emotions—or critical incidents—related to developing their venture idea and to the interpersonal dynamics associated with this process. Planned elements of the course pedagogy—planned pedagogical scaffolds—as well as elements that emerged from students’ engagement in the learning process—emergent individual buffers—facilitated students’ ongoing sensemaking of critical incidents. In the moment, such sensemaking contributed to the de-escalation of negative emotions and to the cognitive reframing of given critical incidents. Over time, ongoing sensemaking promoted the development of an entrepreneurial mindset and of resilient behaviors. By explaining how students learn from critical incidents in an experiential entrepreneurship course, we contribute to research on experiential learning, experiential entrepreneurship education, and entrepreneurial mindset.