Learning from past experience: Footnotes on mindfulness and habitual entrepreneurship

Although scholars have long recognized that failure is endemic to entrepreneurial activity, they have implicitly argued that prior entrepreneurial experience positively affects opportunity discovery and opportunity exploitation. In contrast, I argue that the degree of mindfulness with which entrepreneurs use prior experience can both help and harm their ability to discover and exploit opportunities. I draw on several literatures, including studies of habitual entrepreneurship, behavioral learning theory, and theories of mindfulness, to develop a framework that yields insights about how, when and why habitual entrepreneurs’ use of past experience might improve the performance of their new ventures.