Purpose

When entrepreneurship scholars and policy makers turned their attention to entrepreneurial ventures during the COVID-19 pandemic (2019–2023), its full effects on entrepreneurial firms and systems presented radically challenging questions and unresolved puzzles. In this paper, the authors shed light on these questions and puzzles with a large-scale empirical examination of the pandemic's overall effects on entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial firms, entrepreneurial environments and responses with a view toward success and failure over time.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors adopt a broad exploratory approach and examine different perspectives to develop a deeper understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic's effects on entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial firms, entrepreneurial environments and responses especially regarding the success and failure of entrepreneurial ventures during the pandemic. Thus, the authors built a dataset with 10 survey waves from 2020 to 2021, with an average of 7,000 Brazilian entrepreneurial ventures (SMEs) in each wave of the survey. The authors used this data to examine their performance and survival.

Findings

The findings suggest that the increase of the COVID-19 virus contagion per se did not severely affect entrepreneurial ventures' performance and survival. However, the worsening of the COVID-19 pandemic did weaken entrepreneurial ventures' performance and survival. Moreover, the findings suggest that entrepreneur education has an inverted U-shaped relationship with entrepreneurial ventures performance. Indigenous, Brown and Black entrepreneurs experienced decreased entrepreneurial ventures survival compared to White entrepreneurs. While entrepreneurial ventures that adopted digital technologies and had access to loans increased their performance and survival during the COVID-19 pandemic, those who failed in these aspects experienced negative performance and survival effects. Thus, although the COVID-19 pandemic severely impacted many entrepreneurial ventures and even forced some to close, others survived and even prospered during the environmental shock.

Originality/value

The paper sheds light on a little understood topic: entrepreneurial venture success and failure in the COVID-19 pandemic.

中文翻译：

---

审视 COVID-19 大流行期间创业的成功和失败（2019-2023 年）

目的

当创业学者和政策制定者在 COVID-19 大流行（2019-2023 年）期间将注意力转向创业企业时，其对创业公司和系统的全面影响提出了极具挑战性的问题和未解决的难题。在本文中，作者对这一流行病对企业家、创业公司、创业环境和应对措施的总体影响进行了大规模的实证研究，阐明了这些问题和困惑，并着眼于随着时间的推移成功和失败。

设计/方法论/途径

作者采用广泛的探索性方法并研究不同的观点，以更深入地了解 COVID-19 大流行对企业家、创业公司、创业环境和应对措施的影响，特别是大流行期间创业企业的成功和失败。因此，作者构建了一个包含 2020 年至 2021 年 10 轮调查的数据集，每轮调查平均有 7,000 家巴西创业企业 (SME)。作者使用这些数据来检查他们的表现和生存。

发现

研究结果表明，COVID-19 病毒感染的增加本身并没有严重影响创业企业的绩效和生存。然而，COVID-19 大流行的恶化确实削弱了创业企业的业绩和生存。此外，研究结果表明，企业家教育与创业企业绩效呈倒U型关系。与白人企业家相比，土著、棕色和黑人企业家的创业企业生存率下降。尽管采用数字技术并获得贷款的创业企业在 COVID-19 大流行期间提高了绩效和生存率，但那些在这些方面失败的企业却遭受了负面绩效和生存影响。因此，尽管COVID-19大流行严重影响了许多创业企业，甚至迫使一些企业关闭，但其他企业却在环境冲击中生存下来，甚至蓬勃发展。

原创性/价值

该论文揭示了一个鲜为人知的话题：COVID-19 大流行中创业风险的成功和失败。