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ISB0010.1177/0266242618768662International Small Business JournalAngel et al.
is
Small Firms
Article bj
International Small Business Journal:
Researching Entrepreneurship
Understanding entrepreneurial 2018, Vol. 36(6) 611–636
© The Author(s) 2018
success: A phenomenographic Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/0266242618768662
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Pablo Angel, Anna Jenkins and Anna Stephens

The University of Queensland, Australia
Abstract
Entrepreneurship research has predominately focused on firm-level conceptions of success
and the personal factors that help predict them but has stopped short of investigating what
it means to entrepreneurs. When entrepreneurial success has been studied at the individual
level, the approach has been to identify common success criteria and examine the importance
of these to the entrepreneur. However, criteria-based approaches overlook the possibility that
entrepreneurs may ascribe different meanings to common success criteria, and this can influence
how entrepreneurs develop their firms. In this article, we adopt a phenomenographic approach
to explore what success means to entrepreneurs. Our analysis reveals four qualitatively distinct
understandings of entrepreneurial success and shows that entrepreneurs interpret common
success criteria differently depending on their underlying understanding of success. These findings
extend the literature on entrepreneurial success by illustrating that entrepreneurs not only vary
in the importance they place on different success criteria but also vary in how they understand
these different success criteria.
Keywords
entrepreneurial motivation, entrepreneurial success, firm growth, firm performance,
phenomenography
Introduction
Despite the individual nature of entrepreneurship, existing research has largely focused on firm-
level conceptualisations of entrepreneurial success, such as growth in sales, employees or profit
(Achtenhagen et al., 2010). Research on what success means to entrepreneurs remains scarce
(Fisher et al., 2014; Reijonen and Komppula, 2007; Wach et al., 2016). Within analyses of what
success means to individual entrepreneurs, the predominant approach has been to identify the most
common criteria entrepreneurs use to define success, such as personal satisfaction and wealth
Corresponding author:
Anna Jenkins, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia.
Email: a.jenkins@business.uq.edu.au
612 International Small Business Journal: Researching Entrepreneurship 36(6)
creation, then quantify variation in the importance entrepreneurs place upon these criteria (Fisher
et al., 2014; Gorgievski et al., 2011; Orser and Dyke, 2009; Wach et al., 2016). While this work
offers a more holistic account of entrepreneurial success than firm growth alone, as it encompasses
both subjective and objective dimensions, it still does not fully capture what success means to
entrepreneurs.
In particular, criteria-based approaches at the firm-level and individual level assume that
entrepreneurs interpret the meaning of success criteria in the same way. This, however, may not
be the case. For instance, Kirkwood (2016) found that the success criterion ‘personal satisfac-
tion’ could signify being satisfied with doing a good job, or creative and intellectual satisfaction
or satisfaction from achieving goals, indicating that entrepreneurs may assign numerous differ-
ent meanings to this criterion. Similarly, Fauchart and Gruber (2011) found that depending on an
entrepreneur’s social identity, personal satisfaction takes on different meanings and is achieved
in different ways (e.g. by belonging to and supporting a community or by realising a social mis-
sion). These findings suggest a need to complement criteria-based approaches with interpretive,
understanding-based approaches. Understanding-based approaches are more sensitive to varia-
tion in meaning, enabling the alternative ways in which success criteria are understood to be
captured. They can also offer insights into the implications of differences in meaning for how
entrepreneurs try to achieve success.
A focus on variation in meaning rather than variation in the importance of success criteria may
therefore offer new insights into entrepreneurial success. This, in turn, may help us to better under-
stand why entrepreneurs create and develop their firms in different ways (Fauchart and Gruber,
2011; Sieger et al., 2016). We thus ask the following research question: How do entrepreneurs
understand entrepreneurial success? To answer this question, we employ phenomenography
(Marton, 1981; Svensson, 1997), an interpretive method uniquely suited to examining potential
variation in the meaning of success to entrepreneurs. Through phenomenography, we aim to iden-
tify a set of qualitatively distinct conceptions that capture the different ways in which entrepreneurs
understand success. Further, we aim to explore the implications of the different conceptions for the
salience and meaning of common success criteria.
In the remainder of the article, we review the existing literature and elaborate the need for an
understanding-based approach to success. Following this, we introduce phenomenography as
method and explain how we conducted the study. Next, we present our findings, identifying four
qualitatively distinct conceptions of entrepreneurial success. Finally, we discuss the implications
of our findings for the literature on entrepreneurial success, outline directions for future research
and highlight implications for practice.
Entrepreneurial success
We organise our review of the literature on entrepreneurial success according to the unit of
analysis, that is, whether the conceptualisation of success focuses on the firm or the entrepre-
neur and whether it uses monetary or non-monetary criteria. Jenkins and McKelvie (2016)
adopted a similar approach when reviewing conceptualisations of entrepreneurial failure.
This approach enables the existing literature to be broadly represented, as entrepreneurial
success has been used to refer to the firm or the entrepreneur and also incorporates that suc-
cess criteria can be objectively and subjectively determined (Fisher et al., 2014). Accordingly,
we integrate and build upon prior reviews of entrepreneurial success (e.g. Wach et al., 2016)
by elaborating the manner in which this phenomenon has been conceptualised and measured
to date.
Angel et al. 613
Firm-level monetary criteria

At the firm level, researchers have predominately conceptualised entrepreneurial success as firm
growth (Achtenhagen et al., 2010), using criteria such as growth in sales, profit or employees (Baum
and Locke, 2004; McKelvie and Wiklund, 2010). To operationalise success, entrepreneurs are asked
about their absolute performance in terms of sales, employees or profit, or their relative performance
in comparison to others in the industry (Delmar, 2006). Despite the widespread use of growth indi-
cators to measure entrepreneurial success, studies frequently find only weak correlations among
growth indicators, suggesting that different growth indicators may have different antecedents
(Delmar, 2006; Shepherd and Wiklund, 2009; Weinzimmer et al., 1998). In addition, Wiklund and
Shepherd (2003) found that not all entrepreneurs are growth motivated, suggesting that entrepre-
neurs use criteria in addition to firm growth to measure success (Walker and Brown, 2004).
Firm-level non-monetary criteria

Non-monetary criteria can be broadly defined as an entrepreneur’s satisfaction with the firm’s
performance (Gupta and Govindarajan, 1984), a subjective measure of entrepreneurial success.
Traditional firms can have non-monetary success criteria, such as environmental and sustainability
goals, as well as job creation. However, monetary performance goals are usually the benchmark for
success (Lumpkin et al., 2013). Moving beyond traditional measures of firm success, the literature
on social entrepreneurship has combined monetary measures of success (such as profitability-
enabling firm sustainability) with non-monetary criteria (such as realising social or environmental
goals; Di Domenico et al., 2010). However, social value is subjective and often realised in the
long-term, making it difficult to generate and standardise measures of social value creation.
Consequently, many practitioners and scholars have created their own idiosyncratic measures of
entrepreneurial success limiting the comparability of findings across studies (Arena et al., 2015;
Lumpkin et al., 2013; Ruebottom, 2011; Smith and Stevens, 2010). Due to the lack of agreement
regarding success criteria in the domain of social entrepreneurship, Ruebottom (2011) encourages
researchers to be conscious of the measures they choose and the assumptions that underlie their
choice of success criteria.
Entrepreneur-level monetary criteria

The prevailing focus on firm growth as a measure of success implicitly assumes that entrepreneurs
also view growth in size as the primary metric for success (Achtenhagen et al., 2010). However, a
focus on firm-level outcomes overlooks that entrepreneurs are motivated to start and run firms for
personal reasons (Alstete, 2008; Benzing et al., 2009; Birley and Westhead, 1994; Gorgievski et al.,
2011; Walker and Brown, 2004). Frequently used monetary criteria include personal wealth creation
and income generated (Kirkwood, 2016). However, most studies adopting individual level criteria
focus on a combination of monetary and non-monetary criteria as a way to extend the literature from
a focus on monetary criteria alone, as we now discuss.
Entrepreneur-level non-monetary criteria

Despite widespread agreement that entrepreneurs pursue non-monetary goals, the literature on
entrepreneurial success has only recently begun to investigate non-monetary success criteria at the
level of the entrepreneur (Benzing et al., 2009; Fisher et al., 2014; Gorgievski et al., 2011;
Kirkwood, 2016; Wach et al., 2016). This emerging stream studies ‘subjective entrepreneurial
success’, defined as ‘the individual understanding and assessment of the achievement of criteria
that are personally important to the entrepreneurs’ (Wach et al., 2016: 2). These studies aim to
demonstrate that entrepreneurial success is evaluated using more than monetary criteria and that
these non-monetary criteria influence performance outcomes. For example, Wach et al., (2016)
found that entrepreneurs who prioritised personal fulfilment were more likely to be satisfied with
their lives, while entrepreneurs who prioritised firm performance were more likely to run firms
with higher levels of turnover.
Frequently, success measures are drawn from the literature on entrepreneurial motivation and
imposed by the researcher asking the entrepreneur to rate the importance of different criteria
(Gorgievski et al., 2011; Orser and Dyke, 2009). Alternatively, entrepreneurs are asked what suc-
cess means to them, and based on these answers, items are generated to capture success criteria
(Fisher et al., 2014; Kirkwood, 2016; Wach et al., 2016). For example, based on qualitative inter-
views with 185 entrepreneurs, Wach et al. (2016) identified firm performance, workplace relation-
ships, personal fulfilment, community impact and personal financial rewards as the most common
criteria entrepreneurs use to define their success.
Moving from a criteria-based to an understanding-based approach to success

Our review of the prevailing criteria-based approach to entrepreneurial success shows it has yielded
valuable insights, including that entrepreneurial success is multi-faceted, involves monetary and
non-monetary criteria and is measured at the firm and entrepreneur level. In addition, research on
entrepreneur-level non-monetary success criteria has shown that entrepreneurs value different suc-
cess criteria to different degrees. However, criteria-based approaches do not fully capture what
success means to entrepreneurs. While the studies by Wach et al. (2016) and Fisher et al. (2014)
asked entrepreneurs what success meant to them, their approach was to identify broad categories
of success criteria after analysing qualitative data. Despite starting with an open-ended question
such as ‘what does success mean to you?’, the outcome of aggregating across responses to identify
broad-based criteria overlooks differences in meanings ascribed to distinct success criteria. For
example, Wach et al. (2016) identified personal fulfilment as a non-monetary success criterion,
where this criterion is based on entrepreneurs being able to reach their goals. However, there is
likely to be substantial variance in entrepreneur goals and, therefore, the meaning associated with
goal achievement (Kirkwood, 2016).
A focus on how entrepreneurs understand success, which examines variation in meaning rather
than variation in relative weighting of success criteria, could extend the existing literature on entre-
preneurial success. Variation in how entrepreneurs understand success is likely to influence the
extent entrepreneurs prioritise different approaches for developing their firms (Sieger et al., 2016).
In turn, this may influence the extent to which entrepreneurs prioritise different measures of per-
formance. For example, the extent to which they prioritise different aspects of firm growth or non-
monetary goals and the approaches taken to achieve these outcomes. Hence, differences in how
entrepreneurs understand success have potential to influence not just individual level outcomes
such as the well-being of the entrepreneur (Parasuraman et al., 1996) but also firm-level outcomes
such as firm growth (Achtenhagen et al., 2010; Alstete, 2008).
Method
To answer our research question, we utilised phenomenography as it provides a means of charac-
terising variation in how individuals perceive, experience or enact a specific phenomenon or aspect
of reality (Lamb et al., 2011; Marton, 1981, 1986; Marton and Booth, 1997). The outcome of
Angel et al. 615
phenomenographic analysis is a set of distinct conceptions capturing the manner in which groups
understand a given phenomenon (Åkerlind, 2012). Although the precise number of conceptions
identified is an empirical question, phenomenographic studies to date suggest that the variation is
fairly limited, usually between three to five different ways of understanding a point or issue
(O’Leary and Sandberg, 2017; Tight, 2016). Furthermore, existing studies that indicate concep-
tions are often hierarchically related, with lower order conceptions built upon and expanded to give
progressively more comprehensive and developed ones (Marton and Booth, 1997; Tight, 2016),
although this too is always an empirical question.
The key advantage of using phenomenography is that reveals potential variation in under-
standings of entrepreneurial success by individuals, the implications of this variation for the
meaning of different success criteria and what entrepreneurs do to achieve these criteria (Lamb
et al., 2011; Marton and Booth, 1997). O’Leary and Sandberg (2017), for example, used phe-
nomenography to reveal variation in how managers understand ‘diversity management’. They
identified four qualitatively different understandings of diversity management and found that
these varied understandings were the basis of important differences in the performance of spe-
cific diversity management activities such as sourcing staff, interacting, designing jobs and
developing careers.
Research context and sample selection

The study was conducted in Colombia, a context in which entrepreneurship is prevalent. The
Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, for instance, ranked Colombia third in Latin America in terms
of total entrepreneurial activity (TEA) at 27.4%, and third among efficiency-driven countries
(Global Entrepreneurship Research Association (GERA), 2016). Colombia thus provides a context
where entrepreneurship is an important contributor to both employment and economic growth. As
we are interested in characterising potential variation in meaning of entrepreneurial success and the
implications this has for firm development, we restrict our focus to entrepreneurs who have expe-
rienced success by running firms which are growing. By focusing on entrepreneurs running grow-
ing firms, we reduce the heterogeneity in our sample along this dimension, enabling a stricter
examination of the variation in meanings of success. In addition, possible variation in the meaning
of success can then be attributed to differences in underlying understandings of entrepreneurs
rather than differences in their growth motivations (as not all entrepreneurs are growth motivated;
Wiklund and Shepherd, 2003). To select participants, the following criteria was used: (1) they had
achieved consistent growth in revenue over 2014–2015; (2) they had received both peer and public
recognition as a successful entrepreneur (as indicated by peer references/recommendations, awards
and positive press coverage); (3) they were able to support themselves financially through their
ventures and (4) their firm was between three to nine years of age, ensuring they had overcome
initial liabilities of newness (Headd, 2003) but were more likely to be focused on organic growth
(McKelvie and Wiklund, 2010). Beyond these selection criteria, we increased the diversity of our
sample by including male and female entrepreneurs with start-ups in varied industries. Table 1
presents descriptive information on the participants, their firm’s age, revenue growth rate and evi-
dence of peer and public recognition of their entrepreneurial success.
To recruit participants, we used reference-based techniques (Neergaard, 2007). Drawing on the
first author’s networks, participants were identified who met our selection criteria; in turn, we
asked these initial participants to recommend additional suitable participants. Data collection and
analysis overlapped in our study, and we kept recruiting participants via this chain of social con-
nections until redundancy and repetition was evident in the empirical material (Strauss and Corbin,
1990). At this point, 20 individual entrepreneurs had been recruited. This is consistent with
Table 1. Descriptive characteristics of study participants.
Participanta Gender and Firm focus Firm age Growth in revenue (% Awards and/or
age in years (years) increase) 2014–2015 positive press
Abigailb F, 25 Lifestyle brand 3 128 Y
Albab F, 25 Lifestyle brand 3 128 Y
Alejandro M, 27 Education 3 5 Y
consultancy
Ana F, 32 Fashion design 6 63 Y
Antonio M, 40 Engineering (IT 7 52 Y
infrastructure)
Carolina F, 29 App development 3 50 Y
Esteban M, 27 Interior design firm 3 75 Y
Francisco M, 27 Restaurant and 4 65 Y
events management
Gregorio M, 30 Architecture 4 120 Y
Homero M, 27 Social enterprise 8 35 Y
(sustainability)
Ivan M, 40 Parts distributor 3 Declined for figures to Y
(energy sector) be made public
Jorge M, 29 Manufacturing 3 Declined for figures to Y
be made public
Natalia F, 32 Wedding and events 5 226 Y
planning
Nicolas M, 32 Environmental 5 25 Y
Octavio M, 30 Engineering (military) 6 33 Y
Omar M, 36 Boat design and 9 100 Y
building
Pablo M, 26 Motorcycle apparel 4 50 Y
and equipment
Pedro M, 25 Business consultancy 3 40 Y
Ricardo M, 32 Business consultancy 4 Declined for figures to Y
be made public
Tomas M, 30 Industrial waste 5 86 Y
processing
M: male; F: female; Y: They have received either Awards and/or positive press.
aThe names and identifying characteristics of all participants have been disguised to preserve anonymity.
bAbigail and Alba are from the same venture but treated as separate cases as our analytical focus is on their individual
understanding of success.
previous phenomenographic studies, which show that theoretical saturation is typically achieved
between 15 and 20 participants (Sandberg, 2000; Tight, 2016; Wright et al., 2007).
Data collection
Interview design. We utilised semi-structured interviews (n = 20) for data collection, as this method
enables capture of own perspectives and meanings by participants (Kvale, 2007). The interview
design drew on Kvale’s (1983) ‘life-world interview’ method, which seeks to ‘obtain descriptions
of the interviewees’ lived world with respect to interpretation of the meaning of the described phe-
nomena’ (p. 12). The interviews investigated understanding of success by entrepreneurs through
Angel et al. 617
four open-ended questions: (1) ‘What were your initial motivations to become an entrepreneur?’;
(2) ‘Can you describe how your company has developed from its founding to where it is today?’;
(3) ‘How has the process of developing your company influenced your motivations and goals?’
and (4) ‘What does success as an entrepreneur mean to you?’. Entrepreneurs were repeatedly
prompted to elaborate upon their responses through additional expository questions (Sandberg,
2000). For example, ‘What do you mean by that?’, ‘How do/did you feel about that?’, ‘Can you
give me an example?’, ‘Tell me more about that?’ and ‘What do you do to achieve that?’.
Interview process. The conduct of the interviews unfolded in three phases: (1) online interviews
with Colombian entrepreneurs conducted from Australia via video conference, (2) face-to-face
interviews with Colombian entrepreneurs in Colombia and (3) follow-up discussions and site vis-
its. All phases were carried out by the first author, who was trained in phenomenographic interview
techniques and who conducted and transcribed each interview in Spanish.
The first phase of data collection occurred between September and December 2015 and entailed
online interviews with 13 Colombian entrepreneurs. Cognisant of the possible limitations of online
interviews, we followed recommended best practice (Hanna, 2012; O’Connor et al., 2008). An
initial round of data analysis was then undertaken (see ‘Data analysis’ section). The second phase
of data collection occurred between December 2015 and February 2016; this involved the first
author travelling to Colombia where a further seven face-to-face interviews were conducted. The
interviews ranged in duration from 30–75 minutes, with a mean duration of 43 minutes overall (for
online interviews, the mean was approximately 41 minutes, while for face-to-face interviews,
approximately 45 minutes). Finally, the third phase of data collection occurred between March and
April 2016 and involved site visits and follow-up conversations with 19 of the 20 participants (one
could not be contacted) in which we shared and received feedback on our developing interpreta-
tions. This final step helped ensure the communicative and pragmatic validity of our emerging
interpretations (Sandberg, 2005; see also ‘Validity and reliability criteria’ section).
Data analysis
The first author translated the transcripts into English to facilitate joint analysis by our three-person
research team. A group process is critical in ensuring the validity and reliability of phenomeno-
graphic research (Bowden, 2000). Prior to joint analysis, the English transcripts were compared
with the Spanish transcripts to ensure that the translations were comparable in meaning to the origi-
nals. We also continuously checked our interpretations of the English transcripts against the Spanish
transcripts during analysis. This approach aligns with best practice when working in international
research teams when transcripts are translated to aid data analysis (Shepherd et al., 2017).
The interview transcripts were subjected to phenomenographic analysis to identify a set of con-
ceptions capturing the major features of the different ways participants understood entrepreneurial
success (Bowden and Walsh, 2000). We followed the analytic procedures specified by Sandberg
(2000), Lamb et al. (2011) and O’Leary and Sandberg (2017) which involved three iterative steps.
In Step 1, we identified how participants understood entrepreneurial success in a general sense. We
read each transcript several times, marking statements in each transcript indicative of the partici-
pant’s broad understanding of entrepreneurial success. We assigned these statements a preliminary
meaning-focused descriptor (e.g. ‘success as building personal reputation and legacy’, ‘success as
generating positive social change’), and then compared the statements and associated descriptors
to clarify overlap or variance (O’Leary and Sandberg, 2017). By probing similarities and differ-
ences within and across transcripts, we found that participants could be sorted into four (prelimi-
nary) groups on the basis of the dominant orientation of their general understanding of success, that
Table 2. Step 1 – identifying general understandings of entrepreneurial success.
Initial grouping Representative statements

Individually oriented ‘For me, success resides in doing what you like. And enjoying what you are
success understanding doing. A person that achieves a lot but in the end is not happy with what he is
doing, for me, that’s not success. Being successful is also doing what you like and
that finally fulfills you as a person’. (Jorge)
‘It is the satisfaction of knowing everyday that you wake up and enjoy what you
do’. (Esteban)
Customer-oriented ‘So for me success is being able to fulfill people’s dreams’. (Natalia)
success understanding ‘It’s when there is a customer that writes to me everyday: I love what you are
doing, and we are very happy with you’. (Carolina)
Market-oriented success ‘Success as entrepreneur is that you are able to change paradigms, to put
understanding something different into the market’. (Antonio)
‘Entrepreneurship is a personal challenge, right? Its setting goals, objectives, you
aim for innovations that change the mindset of the public or society’. (Francisco)
Society-oriented success ‘I think that success is linked a lot, ah ... to a vision about the future of the
understanding planet. If we are able to reduce emissions for example, or increase the
amount of bicycles on the road, or increase the number of people using
public transportation ... I mean, things that would leave future generations in
tranquillity. And for me, the satisfaction that I did something, that I inspired
people, and that there is evidence that finally I accomplished that’. (Nicolas)
‘Success as an entrepreneur, since we are in the social sector, is to achieve
changes in society, but that is very ambiguous itself, because success is not a
financial success’. (Homero)
is, whether individually oriented, customer-oriented, market-oriented or society-oriented. These

groups could be distinguished as the focus of understanding gradually shifted from being more
internally oriented (e.g. success resides in doing what you like) to increasingly externally oriented
(e.g. success is fulfilling customer’s dreams; changing market paradigms or changing society; see
illustrative examples in Table 2).
In Step 2, we interpreted understanding of success as expressed through what they did to achieve
and gauge success. We read through each transcript, identifying and highlighting specific state-
ments indicating what participants did to achieve success (i.e. their decisions and activities in
developing their firms). We also highlighted statements indicating how they gauged their success
(financial performance, customer satisfaction, etc). We did this first, for each transcript within each
group and next, compared statements highlighted across each group, iteratively searching for simi-
larities and differences between statements. This iterative process enabled categorisation of state-
ments into a set of overarching dimensions capturing the main criteria for success. Specifically, we
found that all participants consistently described how they sought to achieve and assess success
through reference to four main criteria: first, personal fulfilment; second, customer relationships;
third, community impact and fourth, firm growth (see illustrative examples in Table 3).
In Step 3, we simultaneously considered the success criteria in relation to the general under-
standings of entrepreneurial success (Lamb et al., 2011), examining how each general understand-
ing (Step 1) was expressed through the success criteria (Step 2). We re-read the transcripts for each
participant a number of times, focusing not on the stand-alone statements highlighted in Step 2 but
rather on understanding the statements in the context of the entire transcript. This meant we read
the statements in the context of what was said during interviews and also in relationship to the
transcript as a whole, linking them with other statements in the transcript to reveal their internal
Table 3. Step 2 – identifying success criteria.
Significant statements about Illustrative examples Success criteria

what entrepreneurs do to
Angel et al.
achieve and gauge success

Statements about achieving ‘Things in life are paid not with money, but paid in time. So my definition of success is to do with my time Personal
personally meaningful goals whatever I want to’. (Antonio) fulfilment
through their ventures ‘Every time you find new challenges, new problems to solve, and obviously new business opportunities that
you discover … It fulfils me every day finding new things I can do’. (Gregorio)
Descriptions or examples ‘That way you can achieve it is everyday giving your best and waking up in the most positive way you can.
of how they go about Because the work and passion that you give to things, that is finally going to return in the results you are
achieving and gauging going to get as a company, as a person’. (Jorge)
personally meaningful goals ‘It is when every day you see a project growing, when you see the new things in the streets, and you can
through their ventures raise your head high and say: that thing is there, there is not a scratch because I did it, I designed it. And
look at how well it works, and it’s been there for many years and works perfectly. So that fulfils you … I
mean, you wake up happy everyday’. (Esteban)
Statements about achieving ‘It is giving the customer something more than he is expecting, and that is the challenge I have every day’. Customer
goals that are related to (Carolina) relationships
their customers ‘I really think it is good when your final user feels that the product is worth it, that they keep buying,
they are happy. That they are attached to the experience, that they comment, that they are lovers of the
brand’. (Pablo)
Descriptions or examples of ‘It’s always being authentic in everything, in what you communicate, in how you handle the contact with
how they achieve and gauge your clients, the brands that you work with, everything’. (Abigail)
goals related to customers ‘Come on, what really moves us is not only that customers say “Wow! What an amazing workshop.”
But that from there they go to their company, implemented a change, and afterwards tells us […] “I have
developed this in five different parts of my business”’. (Alejandro)
Statements about achieving ‘I have projects that employ around 150 people. I feel responsible for them. And if I do not have the Community
positive impacts in the workload, how are we going to put these people to work?’. (Esteban) impact
wider community ‘I feel I have to solve those problems, I mean, putting the debate on the table is not enough, I don’t think it
is enough. In fact, I will never accept that as our ultimate purpose’. (Nicolas)
Descriptions of achieving ‘So we are very good and we have skills to communicate a message, to mobilize actors and create visibility.
and gauging positive impacts But we are also very good at bringing these ideas into concrete action in the cities, in collaboration with
in the wider community various institutions, and those ideas influence public policy’. (Homero)
‘Two and a half months ago we won an award from the Chamber of Commerce for shared value’. (Tomas)
(Continued)
619
620
Table 3. (Continued)
Significant statements about Illustrative examples Success criteria

what entrepreneurs do to
achieve and gauge success
Statements about achieving ‘Let’s say the motivations are increasing always. So you want more, you want to risk more to generate Firm growth
goals focused on growth more change, a bigger transformation, impacting more customers, and not only inspiring them, but
and development of the firm enabling them to develop themselves’. (Alejandro)
‘But let’s face it, the company is sustained over time, but the grace is in how risky that sustainability
is. I put it like this: with ten people we’re sustainable, with five people very sustainable … with twenty
sustainable, with thirty sustainable, but know that I’m heading to forty then fifty then one hundred.
Because the goals that we propose is that basically the company will always be in jeopardy, because we
want to grow at a rate at which I have to kill myself doing projects, my partner has to kill himself so that
they are met’. (Antonio)
Descriptions of how they ‘[talking about expanding overseas] … so more than thinking about money, it’s not about that. It is saying,
achieve and gauge goals ok, how are we going to dress this Californian girl that was raised completely differently from us, what
focused on growth and colours work for her … That is really hard! And you start developing a lot of things, you expand your
development of the firm catalogue, so that person is able to identify herself’. (Ana)
‘… if brands don’t look for you, or open the door to you, or the customers don’t respond as you would
like, I don’t think your strategy is successful right? Success is being able to measure results, seeing results
according to your objectives, and seeing that it is being profitable and productive, do you understand? That
is being effective’. (Alba)
International Small Business Journal: Researching Entrepreneurship 36(6)
Angel et al. 621
Table 4. Step 3 – general understandings as expressed through success criteria.
Illustrative example
Gregorio For example, Gregorio expresses his understanding of entrepreneurial success as
(Evolutionist follows: ‘For me success as an entrepreneur is being about to realize that dream that
understanding) I started, and being able to keep doing it, right? That the dream is sustained, and that
always … what is being done, I love it, and I’m passionate about it. That I’m able to
maintain the company and grow it’.
This short statement, by itself, suggests this understanding to be about realising his
personal passions and dreams through his venture and, critically, sustaining this (‘being
able to keep doing it’). Interestingly, all entrepreneurs in our sample articulated similar
views, but for Gregorio, this statement means something more when the statement is
referenced to its immediate context:
‘I told you I liked it a lot because it is a dynamic business. Because every project is
different, every time you take on a new project it comes along with new things. Every
time you find new challenges, new problems to solve, and obviously new business
opportunities you are discovering …. It fulfils me every day finding new things I can do’.
In relation to its immediate context, this statement indicates that for Gregorio, the
meaning of ‘personal fulfilment’ incorporates a strong focus on novelty, discovery and
problem-solving. Throughout this transcript, there are similarly confirming statements,
such as how he describes, how he works to achieve success through ‘firm growth’:
‘You have to be very dynamic, you have to be very active, and work more every day.
To be able to maintain this company I have to be in constant movement, looking for
new opportunities, new business lines, attacking different market niches, developing
different projects (…) You have to be in the environment sniffing where the market is
going. Where is it heading to, and even though the economy is falling you have to look
for those places where you see there might be opportunities for you. So it is about that,
it is monitoring the environment, looking at how is it moving so you don’t remain static
and that it [a change] arrives, and find yourself are asleep … you remained standing still
and … that drives you to bankruptcy’.
Thus, Gregorio’s understanding of success expresses a strong focus on adaption to
dynamic markets through ongoing change and innovation, which reflects an ‘Evolutionist’
conception of success.
associations (Lamb et al., 2011; see illustrative example in Table 4). Through this iterative process,
we found that while all the entrepreneurs gauged success according to the same four criteria (per-
sonal fulfilment, customer relationships, community impact and firm growth), the meanings asso-
ciated with each of these criteria and how they went about achieving them varied depending on
how they understood entrepreneurial success. In total, we identified four qualitatively distinct con-
ceptions of entrepreneurial success. We labelled these ‘Individualist’, ‘Tribalist’, ‘Evolutionist’
and ‘Revolutionist’. Seven entrepreneurs expressed Conception 1 (Individualist); five expressed
Conception 2 (Tribalist); five expressed Conception 3 (Evolutionist) and three expressed
Conception 4 (Revolutionist).
Validity and reliability criteria

We used the reliability and validity criteria specified by Sandberg (2005), as these are commonly
applied in phenomenographic research (e.g. Lamb et al., 2011; O’Leary and Sandberg, 2017;
Sandberg, 2000). Specifically, focused on communicative, pragmatic and transgressive validity.
Communicative validity involves ongoing negotiation of alternative knowledge claims during the
research; pragmatic validity entails testing interpretive insights in action; and transgressive validity
uses contradictions and tensions to address the ambiguity and complexity of lived experience
(Sandberg, 2005). These three validity criteria are complemented by a fourth criterion: ‘reliability
as interpretive awareness’ (Sandberg, 2000; Sandberg, 2005). Interpretive awareness involves rec-
ognition that researchers cannot escape subjectivity and must strive for awareness of their particu-
lar disciplinary, theoretical and methodological assumptions during the research process. Table 5
outlines how we fulfilled these criteria during our study.
Next, we present the findings from our phenomenographic analysis, revealing the varied ways
in which entrepreneurs understand entrepreneurial success.
Findings: the meaning of entreprenerial success

We identified four qualitatively distinct understandings of entrepreneurial success: first,
Individualist; second, Tribalist; third, Evolutionist and fourth, Revolutionist. Similar to existing
research, we found that all entrepreneurs used four main criteria when it came to gauging success:
first, personal fulfilment; second, customer relationships; third, community impact; and fourth,
firm growth. However, and in contrast to existing research, we observed that the meaning of these
criteria varied depending on the particular conception of success expressed. The four success con-
ceptions are outlined in Table 6.
Individualists
Individualists express the narrowest and most normative understanding of success, prioritising
accomplishment of individually focused goals. For these entrepreneurs, success means doing what
they like and being the best at what they do. Individualists develop products and services with
which they identify and feel passionate. They value customer relationships and community impact
as vehicles to build their personal reputation and legacy. Firm growth is equated to their personal
growth as entrepreneurs; consequently, they do not distinguish between firm achievements and
their personal achievements.
To elaborate, Individualists predominately view entrepreneurship as a vehicle for personal ful-
filment. Here, success means transforming their individual ideas, dreams and passions into a ‘real’
and ‘tangible’ business:
… [success] is going to be like that idea that you had sometime … is a reality. Let’s say that if you dreamed
about it or you imagined it at some point in your life, [and] you turned it into something tangible’. (Tomas)
In turning their passions and dreams into a tangible business, Individualists realise personally
valued ends, such as the freedom and autonomy to work on ‘what you like’ (Jorge) and the pride of
having ‘something of my own’ (Tomas). Alba explains, ‘success as an entrepreneur is being able to
say; I’m doing what I like, what I’m passionate about, what motivates me, and I’m doing great’.
Individualists value customer relationships to achieve their individually focused goals. While
Individualists seek personal fulfilment through following their own path, they simultaneously
strive to be recognised as being the best at what they do. Esteban, for example, expresses his desire
to be perceived as ‘powerful’ in the sense that his customers view him as capable of doing the best
job and that he is front of mind when they think about someone that ‘does it right’. He explains,
Success is power. Power is … people saying, ‘You know what, let’s do this. Call Esteban, call SDesign [his
company]. That guy is extremely skilled in what he does … don’t call anyone else, call SDesign. Call that
Table 5. Ensuring validity and reliability in phenomenographic research.
Criteria How criteria were addressed
Validity Communicative Three main strategies: •• At the outset of the interviews, we established a ‘community of interpretation’ (Apel, 1972) with study
Angel et al.
validity 1. Developing mutual participants to ensure mutual understanding of the study and its intentions
understanding •• During interviews, we utilised open-ended questions, asked participants to elaborate upon their answers
between the and asked for specific examples to better grasp participant understandings
researcher and •• During analysis, we searched for coherence among our interpretations by scrutinising statements in
participants as to the relation to both the immediate context of surrounding statements and the transcript as a whole. We also
task at hand scrutinised how each individual transcript related to entire group of transcripts. This iterative movement
2. Searching for coherent between parts-and-whole is a central feature of phenomenographic analysis. (Åkerlind, 2012)
interpretations; •• We made use of a group-based analysis process. Following Bowden (2000: 57), our process was for the
emphasising the first author (who was responsible for the initial analysis) to explain his rationale for the categorisation
hermeneutic relation and description, while the second and third author tested and probed. This constructive use of ‘devil’s
between the parts and advocacy’ throughout iterative readings of the transcripts enabled us to ensure that the complete
the whole evidence of the interviews was extracted and applied in identifying the success conceptions
3. Discussing research •• We shared our findings with 19 participants (one could not be contacted) to determine whether the
findings with others conceptions could be challenged or refined. All confirmed the validity of the success conceptions identified
Pragmatic Testing knowledge •• In order to reveal possible divergences between participants say and what they actually do, during
validity produced in action interviews we asked follow-up questions requesting participants to illustrate and explain their responses
by use of concrete examples
•• Where possible, we compared our findings from the interviews with observations of participant daily
activities. In the second phase of the study, the first author conducted site visits with most of the
participants including those initially interviewed online. These visits enabled us to pragmatically validate
our interpretations by observing the entrepreneurs at work and compare what the entrepreneurs did, to
our interpretations of what they said, they did in the interviews
Transgressive Accounting for the •• We deliberately searched for discrepancies and tensions across the interview transcripts to prevent
validity ambiguity and complexity us overlooking complexities and ambiguities in understandings of success. We followed the specific
of lived experience by recommendations of Green (2005), who advocates crosschecking interpretations by asking questions
deliberately searching such as: ‘What is missing?’ (searching for gaps), ‘What else might this mean?’ (allowing for alternative
for contradiction and meanings), ‘What does this not mean?’ (looking for contradictory evidence), ‘What is different about this
tensions conception?’ (trying to maximise difference to find a coherent, consistent and focused conception) and
‘How else might this be represented? (looking for another way to show conceptions, for example, the
use of grids or concept maps to illustrate the relations between conceptions)
•• We continued this questioning until we were confident that we had faithful and plausible interpretations
of the diverse ways of understanding entrepreneurial success and that the identified conceptions
remained stable
623
(Continued)
624
Table 5. (Continued)
Criteria How criteria were addressed
Reliability Interpretive Challenging taken-for- •• We strove to prevent ourselves from unreflectively applying known theories and assumptions in our
awareness granted assumptions study and to be instead ‘maximally open’ to lived experience of entrepreneurial success (Sandberg,
by deploying the 2005). In data collection, we did this by orienting ourselves to own understandings of participants
‘phenomenological through using ‘how’, ‘what’ and ‘why’ questions, and for continually asking for elaboration and illustration
epoche’ of their statements
•• In data analysis, we consciously sought to ‘bracket’ the research team’s existing preconceptions about
entrepreneurial success and strove to ensure that our interpretations were grounded in participant
understandings (Wright et al., 2007). We also cultivated reflexivity as a tactic to overcome culturally and
theoretically determined patterns of thinking within the team (Easterby-Smith and Malina, 1999; Thomas
et al., 2009), a critical step in cross-cultural research. We did this by using a group analytic process which
encouraged reflexivity through constant challenge of one another’s favoured lines of interpretation.
(Walsh, 2000; Alvesson and Sköldberg, 2009)
Development of the table informed by Åkerlind (2012), Green (2005) and Sandberg (2000, 2005).
International Small Business Journal: Researching Entrepreneurship 36(6)
Angel et al. 625
Table 6. Understandings of entrepreneurial success.
Success criteria
Understanding of success Personal fulfilment Customer satisfaction Community impact Firm growth
Individualist
‘It is being good at what you Success is Success is customers Success is giving back Success is growing
do, and people recognise it, achieving personal recognising them as through employing as a person
and you have the tranquillity to meaning through being the ‘best’ at others, as well as through growing
say: I have the power of being accomplishing what they do obtaining the esteem their firms
relaxed because I did this and I individually focused of peers and public
did it well. That is success …’. needs
(Esteban)
(Esteban, Alba, Jorge, Tomas,
Omar & Pedro)
Tribalist
‘So that is like a success Success is Success is creating an Success is not just Success is growing
moment, when you are able to achieving personal emotional connection employing others, their tribe
make that tough customer fall meaning through with customers based but sustaining a through growing
in love … it is when you create accomplishing on shared values community of their firm
that connection with the user, customer-focused ‘co-creators’ and
that they really feel that what goals partners committed
you have developed, what you to the brand
wanted to create, and it really
is, for what they are using it,
well what you designed it for’.
(Pablo)
(Natalia, Carolina, Abigail,
Pablo & Ana, Alejandro)
Evolutionist
‘Success has to be rewritten Success is achieving Success is anticipating Success is adding Success is growing
every year. If you deliver a bad personal meaning the changing needs of value to the local to adapt to a
product … the market takes through innovating customers entrepreneurial dynamic market
you out’. (Ivan) to change market ecosystem by
(Octavio, Antonio, Ivan, paradigms substantively
Gregorio & Francisco) changing existing
market norms and
practices
Revolutionist
‘We don’t want to be the Success is achieving Success is achieving positive changes in Success is
best in the world; we want personal meaning the well-being of customers and the wider growing through
to be the best for the world’. through working community partnerships and
(Ricardo) towards positive networks to scale
(Homero, Ricardo & Nicholas) social change social change
through their
ventures
company, because that guy has the power of doing it like no one else. That guy has the power of doing it
well and the power for it to endure’ That is success for me, being powerful.
For Individualists, community impact is a marker of success because it contributes to their per-
sonal reputation and legacy. This is made manifest in two ways. First, Individualists feel successful
and take pride in ‘… generating employment, of being able to give jobs to people. So that is already
like a way of giving back’ (Tomas). They express a paternalistic sense of responsibility to their
employees and see that success means they can take care of them. Second, public recognition, the
esteem of peers and awards are also an important to Individualists. For example, Pedro gained
satisfaction and validation when famous people in his field knew who he was: ‘This guy knows
who I am, and knows what I’ve been doing. If he knows what I’m doing, it’s because I must be
doing things right’.
Finally, Individualists see firm growth as a key indicator of success. Here firm growth is not so
much about increasing firm revenue and personal wealth although ‘… you have to look for eco-
nomic stability’ (Esteban). Rather, firm growth is closely connected to personal growth as
Individualists build their business around a personal passion and consider the venture part of who
they are. Omar describes being motivated to continue growing his firm because ‘it is growing as a
person and knowing you can do it’. He goes on to explain,
I see my competitors and see that I do not like how they do it. I think they are … what I see is that the type
of business it’s very long-lived, but very passive. They grow to a point and stay there for years, with
generations, children and parents, but it is the same. You have to go further, and that is what motivates me
to transform it.
Tribalists
Tribalists build on Individualist conceptions of success by positioning customers as central. While
Tribalists also pursue individually focused goals, their understanding of success expands so that the
meaning of personal fulfilment and community impact becomes customer-centred. For Tribalists,
success is creating a loyal ‘tribe’ of customers and employees with an emotional connection to the
venture. Firm growth is about growing their tribe, and so this necessitates customers happiness.
Although Tribalists also seek to realise individual passions, autonomy and a sense of ownership
and accomplishment through their ventures, the primary source of personal fulfilment for Tribalists
is customer satisfaction:
… it is like achieving my own deepest dreams, but also accomplishing my life’s purpose. And my life’s
purpose is having something aesthetic to offer to people, it is about making people feel satisfied with what
I do. I mean I’m not the kind of person that takes money out of people’s pockets, no. What I’m interested
in, is that people feel happy with what I do. For me that is success. (Natalia)
Tribalists derive personal meaning from making a difference to their customers. Accordingly,
they prioritise ‘always thinking what could make a difference, a difference for the person that is on
the other side, for your follower, or customer’ (Abigail).
Unsurprisingly, Tribalists view strong customer relationships as a key facet of success. For
Tribalists, the meaning of this criterion is not just about customer recognition but expands to also
include the customer’s emotional response. For example, Tribalists use emotive language to
describe how they want customers to feel when using their products and services:
So that is like a success moment, when you are able to make that tough customer fall in love … it is when
you create that connection with the user, that they really feel that what you have developed, what you
wanted to create, and it really is, for what they are using it, well what you designed it for. (Pablo)
Beyond an emotional connection, success in customer relationships means creating a loyal fol-
lowing of customers that identify with and trust in their brand. Alejandro, for example, views suc-
cess to mean creating a community around shared values such as happiness and well-being:
Angel et al. 627
… we are creating a community, not only face to face but also virtual, where people gather to share and
co-create actions of happiness and wellbeing within companies. (Alejandro)
Like Individualists, Tribalists describe community impact in terms of the pride and satisfaction
they derive from being able to offer employment to others. However, they extend their sense of
community impact to view employees not as dependents but as partners and ‘co-creators’. As Ana
clarifies, achieving success requires employees to share the same commitment to customers as this
is reflected in the products/services produced:
Then that has been very important here at Mahna [her company], here we say that the ones that enter
Mahna have to be very related to Mahna, to be authentic in what they are doing. Even the ladies that are
here in our small workshop making the clothes, they must feel it is beautiful, and they must like what they
are doing, because all of that is reflected on the product.
Finally, Tribalists view firm growth (i.e. increasing customer base and revenue) as a marker of
success as it means they are fulfilling customer needs. As Natalia stated,
If I fulfil those deepest dreams of people, money comes along. Then for me success is not saying I make
$150,000 in a month. No, it is that people leave happy. Because that person is going to recommend more
people and the business is going to grow more and more.
For Tribalists, firm growth is equated to growing their tribe. Importantly, and building on
Individualist conceptions, Tribalists belived growth is less about one’s personal development and
needs but more about prioritising customers:
And you have to understand some things, the way that you are going to grow, and well, the ambition you
have … how you are going to have a group of followers from the beginning, that they are going to be like
… your battle horses during that time. And if you don’t take care of them, if you don’t listen to them, you
are going to lose all that you have. And even more if it’s just about earning money. (Pablo)
Evolutionists
For Evolutionists, success is understood not just in terms of individual achievement or customer
relationships but expands to incorporate the broader notion of changing market paradigms through
innovation. Evolutionists gain personal fulfilment through being innovators. They strive to con-
stantly reinvent what they do in anticipation of customer needs. Community impact means adding
value to the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Firm growth is an important metric for success as it signals
the firm’s ability to adapt and survive in a dynamic market.
In addition to realising individually and customer-centred goals, Evolutionists gain satisfaction
and meaning through being innovators. Their predominant source of personal fulfilment is pursu-
ing novelty and changing paradigms:
Success as an entrepreneur, I see it as changing something, changing the paradigm. Something you said,
‘this is very bad’, so I redesign it, develop it so it works, and I change the paradigm of how it works.
(Antonio)
Evolutionist emphasis on novelty and change means that the goal posts for success are con-
stantly shifting:
It’s like a mountain, you are climbing the mountain, and then you only see the top of the mountain because
what is behind is hidden. But once you get to the top you see there is a very beautiful valley, and you want
to get down to that valley. And in the valley you realize that there is another mountain. So it’s like that
desire to keep going, keep producing, and keep generating more value. (Octavio)
Like Individualists and Tribalists, a key facet of success for Evolutionists is customer relation-
ships. However, the meaning that Evolutionists attach to this criterion differs in two ways. First,
Evolutionists are more attentive to customer needs than Individualists. This difference is captured
by Octavio, who articulates how his understanding has gradually shifted from an Individualist to
an Evolutionist conception:
Let’s say I’ve become much more pragmatic and not so idealistic: Oh this is mine this is my canvas, and I’m
painting my legacy. At the end of the day a company adds value to a public that is its potential customers.
And let’s say that now, you understand more that you are doing it for others, adding value to others, right?
[…] So to summarise, the aim has changed from this is my castle, and here I’m the king, where the
motivation was like to build, create your fortress, now it turns to something like I’m adding value to others.
Second, and in contrast to Tribalists, Evolutionists view customer relationships in instrumental

rather than emotional terms: ‘we understand what their problem is and we solve it’. Achieving cus-
tomer satisfaction becomes an ongoing process of anticipating shifting customer requirements:
With one of the customers we have right now … They said that for twelve years they were trying to do this
and never could, but that does not mean that what we have with this platform now is a success. No, we
have already started thinking about what they want one year from now, so they can continue using the
platform, selling through it, commercializing through it. I mean, success is what I said at the beginning, its
identifying the unmet needs of people. (Ivan)
Evolutionists also have a broader understanding of community impact than Individualists and
Tribalists. While they also take pride in employing others, generating an impact also entails ‘build-
ing value, and let’s say giving to the ecosystem and other entrepreneurs, my customers, and other
entities I touch, something they didn’t have’ (Octavtio). Evolutionists feel successful when they
make a substantive impact on existing ways of doing things in their industry. As one example,
Francisco disrupted prevailing norms in the city’s hospitality market by enabling more profes-
sional and customised restaurant and events services, something ‘impossible’ a couple of years ago
given the low social status traditionally accorded to such work in Colombia.
In terms of firm growth, Evolutionists share with Individualists and Tribalists the belief that
increasing financial returns are essential but not the primary benchmark for success. Here, financial
performance is largely viewed as an enabler of ongoing firm development. For Evolutionists, success
is ephemeral, and continual development of their firms is necessary to survive in a dynamic market:
So you have to be in the environment sniffing where the market is going. Where is it heading to, and even
though the economy is falling you have to look for those places where you see there might be opportunities
for you. So it is about that, it is monitoring the environment, looking at how is it moving so you don’t
remain static and that it [a change] arrives, and find yourself are asleep … you remained standing still and
… that drives you to bankruptcy. (Gregorio)
Revolutionists
Revolutionists express the most expansive and outwardly focused conception of success: they
understand success as generating positive social change. This conception of success is
Angel et al. 629
society-centred, in that Revolutionist goals are framed in terms of the collective good. Revolutionists
derive personal fulfilment from tackling difficult social problems and pursuing ends with tangible
public benefit. These ends are revolutionary as they involve fundamentally changing how people,
companies and governments understand and act in relation to a particular aspect of society. Firm
growth is an enabler of success as scale is required to achieve societal level outcomes.
Revolutionists derive personal fulfilment from working towards positive social change.
Evolutionists see their ventures as a means to a (social) end, and this end transcends their personal
interests. For instance, Ricardo (a for-profit entrepreneur) asserts that ‘we don’t want to be the best
in the world; we want to be the best for the world’. He goes on to say that what matters is not his
venture per say but rather the social change achieved through it:
… [success is] that the model works, that the model impacts people, that it reduces costs, and it can be
replicated regionally. I think that way I see the world, being successful is to do something that many people
want to copy or kill. Someone used to tell me a while ago: Hey man, what if they copy you? Well I hope
someone does copy us, what is the worst thing that could happen if someone copies us … that they will
save more people … what a terrible thing (sarcasm) …. (Ricardo)
It should be noted that not all of the individuals who expressed this understanding were social
entrepreneurs, but all spoke about the social change they sought through their ventures.
Revolutionists primarily assess success in terms of changes in the well-being of people and com-
munities. Given this, there is little distinction between how they understand customer relationships
and community impact; their ‘customers’ are the broader community or society. As Homero explains,
But I think success is in those real changes in society, in the communities. Success is that governments
make appropriate public policies. Success is to see that entrepreneurs, who thought only about profits and
EBITDA, are inspired to change their enterprises and institutions to make more social projects …. To me
that’s how I believe that success is measured.
However, Revolutionists often struggle to assess their success in these terms. On the one hand,
there is a fundamental ambiguity in gauging the results of their efforts:
And the other thing, I believe that it is also about inspiring, but knowing we are inspiring, like I don’t know
… because even today I do not know how to measure it. (Nicholas)
On the other hand, Revolutionists were never fully satisfied with what they accomplished
expressing a nagging sense of needing to do more, a feeling that what has been achieved so far is
not significant or far reaching enough:
A lot of people say to me: No, you have achieved a lot. But I have a totally different conception. I think
that to this point we should have reached a hundred times more. (Nicholas)
Finally, Revolutionists see firm growth as an indicator of success because increasing scale is
necessary for social change. As with other conceptions, Revolutionists frame financial returns as
means not ends. Revolutionists seek growth by mobilising others to join their efforts. They realise
success by enrolling powerful allies and creating a network of individuals and organisations united
by a vision of transformative social change:
Let’s say that finally there is a name, a corporation, but what is built is a network of people, knowledge …
and you can upscale that with many projects. So personally, it is about building a network of individuals
and organizations that can create a change and applying that knowledge personally in other new initiatives.
(Homero)
Sources of variation
We examined the characteristics of the entrepreneurs and their firms to ascertain if these could be
potential sources of variation in meaning of entrepreneurial success. Two observations were nota-
ble. First, gender may have an influence on an entrepreneur’s understanding of success. Of the
women in the study, the majority (four of the five women) expressed a Tribalist understanding of
success. We found only male entrepreneurs expressed an Evolutionist and a Revolutionist under-
standing of success. Cardon et al. (2017) found a similar result in studies of entrepreneurial passion
with women entrepreneurs being more passionate about working with family, satisfying customers
and building meaningful relationships with employees, vendors and affiliates. This suggests that
women may be more inclined to create businesses where they focus on building successful rela-
tionships as they are central to their understanding of success.
Second, the average venture age was higher in the Evolutionist and Revolutionist success con-
ceptions (4.8 years and 5.7 years respectively; average venture age was >4.3 for Individualist and
Tribalists). This suggests that conceptions of success may shift with firm age. Although we exam-
ined entrepreneur understanding of success at a distinct point in time, prior phenomenographic
studies indicate that over time individual understandings can either stay within the same concep-
tion or shift to an alternative conception (Dall’Alba and Sandberg, 2006). Indeed, we found some
evidence for this in our study, exemplified by Octavio (MilliNova) whose statements about how his
view of success has changed over time indicated a shift from an Individualist to an Evolutionist
understanding. Moreover, Wach et al. (2016) found that with age, financial rewards became less
important, while the importance of community impact increased. Such changes in understandings
of success could be driven by positive and negative firm performance, external triggers such as
changes in the economy or internal triggers such as learning.
Discussion
Our findings make three contributions to the entrepreneurship literature. First, we identity a
typology of entrepreneurs based on their understanding of entrepreneurial success. While the
existing literature has shown that entrepreneurial success is multifaceted and has sought to quan-
tify variation in the importance of different monetary and non-monetary success criteria to entre-
preneurs (Fisher et al., 2014; Gorgievski et al., 2011; Reijonen and Komppula, 2007; Wach et al.,
2016), it has stopped short of revealing variation in the meaning of success to entrepreneurs.
Through our phenomenographic approach, we extend this literature to show that entrepreneurs
understand success in four qualitatively different ways: Individualist, Tribalist, Evolutionist and
Revolutionist. Furthermore, we found that these different understandings are hierarchically
related, in that each understanding is built upon and expanded to give progressively more com-
prehensive understandings that move from achieving individually focused to socially focused
goals (see Figure 1).
To elaborate, Individualists have the least expansive understanding of success, as their focus
remains on the individual and they do not differentiate between their personal success and the suc-
cess of the firm. Tribalists expand on this conception of success by incorporating the customer as
the predominate source of meaning and emphasising customer relationships as the main bench-
mark for success. Evolutionists expand upon the Tribalist conception of success by incorporating
a strong market-orientation. By broadening their understanding of success to incorporate the
Angel et al. 631
Figure 1. Hierarchy of success conceptions.
market, transforming market paradigms through innovation becomes central. Finally, Revolutionists
express the most expansive conception of success; they incorporate their influence upon wider
society, creating a value-driven understanding of success that prioritises positive social change.
Revolutionists also express the clearest distinction between themselves as entrepreneurs and the
firms they create.
Interestingly, other typologies of entrepreneurs have also found increasing social inclusiveness
in their frameworks, for example, in the social identity of the entrepreneurs (Fauchart and Gruber,
2011) or in the scale and scope of markets served (Zahra et al., 2009), suggesting that how entre-
preneurs incorporate social inclusiveness in what they do is an important aspect for understanding
the nature of the firms they create.
Second, we show that how entrepreneurs understand entrepreneurial success leads to varia-
tion in how they interpret common success criteria – that is, personal fulfilment, customer rela-
tionships, community impact and firm growth – and the importance they place on these criteria.
To exemplify, we found that all entrepreneurs placed importance on customer relationships,
arguably a relatively narrow success criterion; however, the meaning, salience and role of cus-
tomer relationships differed. Tribalists, for example, placed the customer at the centre of their
understanding of success having a strong customer orientation (Jones and Rowley, 2011) that
focused attention on fulfilling customers values, needs and preferences. In contrast, Evolutionists
placed the market at the centre of their understanding of success and saw that success in cus-
tomer relationships meant anticipating and solving customer problems through innovation
(Connor, 1999).
Our finding that entrepreneurs vary in how they interpret the meaning of different success cri-
teria has important implications for how these are measured. In particular, it yields opportunities to
create more nuanced and fine-grained measures of entrepreneurial success that tap into these dif-
ferent basic understandings, potentially allowing greater precision in theorising on the meaning of
entrepreneurial success and its implications (Wach et al., 2016). For example, rather than asking
the importance of employee or customer satisfaction (Wach et al., 2016), our findings suggest the
need for more refined measures that capture the role customers play in an entrepreneur’s under-
standing of success, such as ‘I feel successful when I achieve an emotive response in the customer’
(Tribalist understanding) and ‘I feel successful when a customer compliments me on my products
and services’ (Individualist understanding).
Third, our findings suggest that how entrepreneurs understand success also has implications for
how they go about developing their firms, as well as for their individual well-being. This offers
new insights to both the literature on firm growth (Nason and Wiklund, 2015) and the nascent lit-
erature entrepreneurial on well-being (Uy et al., 2013). The growth literature has focused on growth
in sales, profit or employees to capture success (Baum and Locke, 2004; McKelvie and Wiklund,
2010). However, like Achtenhagen et al. (2010), we found that entrepreneurs did not speak about
firm growth in these terms. Rather, while all identified firm growth as an important facet of entre-
preneurial success, what growth meant to them, and what motivated them to grow, differed accord-
ing to their understanding of success. Thus, Individualists viewed firm growth as a marker of
success because they saw that the growth of their firm provided a vehicle for them to personally
grow as an individual and as an entrepreneur, and to create and build a legacy. In contrast,
Revolutionists saw firm growth as a key marker of success as it meant attaining the scale and
resources required to effect social change.
With conceptual development on firm growth stalling (Nason and Wiklund, 2015; Wiklund
et al., 2009), a focus on what success means to an entrepreneur could provide a new approach to
understanding firm growth, shifting the emphasis from explaining how much a firm grows to
explaining how firms grow (Leitch et al., 2010; McKelvie and Wiklund, 2010). Our findings
suggest that an entrepreneur’s understanding of success not only influences what growth means
to them but is also likely to influence the strategies they adopt to grow. For example, it is pos-
sible that Individualists are more reluctant to pursue innovative or risky opportunities for growth,
as failure to achieve them risks their reputation or legacy. Evolutionists, in comparison, are more
likely to focus on growing through investing in research and development, to foster innovation
and launch new products to the market. Revolutionists are likely to grow through investing in
building stakeholder relationships and by developing partnerships. Revolutionists, thus, share
many of the characteristics of social entrepreneurs – their ability to attract community support
and resources is a reflection of whether they have identified a social problem which others view
as worthy of solving (Austin et al., 2006; Lumpkin et al., 2013). Focusing on these different
approaches to firm growth could help explain why there are weak correlations among growth
indicators.
Finally, turning to emerging well-being literature, an entrepreneur’s understanding of success is
also likely to have implications for their individual well-being (Wiklund et al., 2017). For example,
Evolutionists view success as unattainable because they constantly shift the ‘goal posts’ for suc-
cess. Similarly, Revolutionists highlight their struggle with ambiguity in assessing the outcomes of
their efforts towards social change. Viewing success as something fundamentally unattainable or
ambiguous may create feelings of distress, increase the likelihood of feeling dissatisfied with the
performance of their ventures and increase the possibility of burnout in the long run. Focusing on
the relationship between well-being and meaning of success therefore creates an interesting avenue
for future research.
Angel et al. 633
Practical implications
Currently, governments are encouraging individuals to engage with entrepreneurship as a means to
foster economic growth and innovation. Our findings reveal that there is substantial variation in
how entrepreneurs understand success beyond normative financial reward. Tapping into these
additional motivations could attract more individuals into an entrepreneurial career. Our findings
on how entrepreneurs develop their firms also signals potential policy triggers for encouraging dif-
ferent types of entrepreneurs to further develop their firms. For example, R&D tax incentives are
likely to spur and assist Evolutionists to innovate, while programmes facilitating collaboration are
likely to be important for Revolutionists.
Conclusion
We conducted a phenomenographic study where we interviewed 20 entrepreneurs to uncover vari-
ation in the meaning of success to entrepreneurs. The typology of entrepreneurs we identified –
Individualists, Tribalists, Evolutionists and Revolutionists – contributes to the entrepreneurship
literature by providing an alternative lens through which entrepreneurial success can be studied.
This shifts the emphasis from criteria-based approaches, where it is assumed that all entrepreneurs
interpret success criteria in the same way, to an understanding-based approach which shows that
the meaning and salience of success criteria to entrepreneurs depends on their underlying under-
standing of success. This reveals new approaches to studying entrepreneurial success and the strat-
egies entrepreneurs adopt for achieving such success.
Author’s Note
The authors contributed equally and are shown in alphabetical order.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Professor Claire Leitch and two anonymous reviewers who provided exten-
sive and developmental feedback which greatly enhanced the clarity and accessibility of the paper. They
would also like to thank and acknowledge the on-going guidance from Jorgan Sandberg and April Wright
throughout the research process and the peer reviews received from Leona Achtenhagen, Pia Arenius and the
participants at the ACERE paper development workshop; Gold Coast, 2016.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
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Author biographies
Pablo Angel is currently founding partner at XConsulting, and also Head of the Centre for Entrepreneurial
Development at UPB University in Colombia. His research interests include entrepreneurial success, corpo-
rate entrepreneurship and innovation practices within companies. Pablo holds a Master of Business from the
University of Queensland Business School and has experience as a lecturer, entrepreneur and in corporate
roles in topics such as the development of products and services, corporate strategy, innovation, entrepreneur-
ship, sharing economies, and exponential organizations.
Anna Jenkins, PhD is a Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Queensland. Her
research focuses on how entrepreneurs navigate the process of starting, managing and exiting their firms.
Taking a social psychology perspective, she focuses on learning, decision making, stress and motivation
throughout the entrepreneurship process.
Anna Stephens is currently a Research Fellow at the UQ Business School, University of Queensland, Australia.
Her research interests relate to how individuals, organisations, and groups of organisations learn, innovate,
and change. She uses social practice theories and process organisation theories to advance understanding of
these processes in diverse professional and organizational settings, including healthcare, entrepreneurship,
biotechnology, architecture, engineering, and higher education.

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Pablo Angel, Anna Jenkins and Anna Stephens

Firm-level monetary criteria

Firm-level non-monetary criteria

Entrepreneur-level monetary criteria

Entrepreneur-level non-monetary criteria

Moving from a criteria-based to an understanding-based approach to success

Research context and sample selection

Table 1. Descriptive characteristics of study participants.

Table 2. Step 1 – identifying general understandings of entrepreneurial success.

Initial grouping Representative statements

is, whether individually oriented, customer-oriented, market-oriented or society-oriented. These

Significant statements about Illustrative examples Success criteria

achieve and gauge success

Significant statements about Illustrative examples Success criteria

Table 4. Step 3 – general understandings as expressed through success criteria.

Validity and reliability criteria

Findings: the meaning of entreprenerial success

Criteria How criteria were addressed

Table 6. Understandings of entrepreneurial success.

Second, and in contrast to Tribalists, Evolutionists view customer relationships in instrumental

Figure 1. Hierarchy of success conceptions.

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