The Mechanisms of Learning and the Survival of New Ventures

There are two main activities in entrepreneurial process associated with the survival of new ventures: coping with the liabilities of newness and exploit competitive advantage. Entrepreneurship is a process of learning. Based on available research on entrepreneurship, we identify internal and external mechanisms of learning in new ventures and propose that the role of learning is highlighted as central as it provides entrepreneurs the possibility to improve their ability to to learn how to overcome traditional obstacles when organizing and managing new ventures (i.e., the liabilities of newness) and exploit competitive advantage in new ventures.