Entrepreneurial Behavior as the Key to Success in Venture and Private Life

Due to their newness and smallness, founders and their ventures are often confronted with resource constraints. However, entrepreneurial ventures have to be highly innovative in order to survive in volatile environments. At the same time, their founders have to balance their working and private life in order to achieve life satisfaction and health. By considering the resourceful behavior of entrepreneurial bricolage and the moderating role of entrepreneurial and employee experience, this paper discovers a promising way to meet these challenges in order to be successful on organizational as well as on personal level. In an empirical study with 653 entrepreneurial ventures, we identified a positive effect of entrepreneurial bricolage on both entrepreneurial venture innovativeness and entrepreneurs’ work-life balance. In alignment with our predictions, we found that entrepreneurs’ employee experience moderates the relationship between bricolage and innovativeness, while entrepreneurial experience moderates the link between bricolage and work-life balance. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.