“For a project to be successful you have to put yourself first, really know yourself to be able to even listen to others.” “What happened to me was that I had to overcome the conflict of ideas and perspectives, I think I did through understanding and love.” Beatrice’s main learning was that she had to have a back-up financial plan and could not rely on only one source of investment to fund a whole project. She also realizes that “most things are in our own control” and it is important to listen to our body and mental state so that we do not overdo things. This learned lesson comes from her intensive experience according to Beatrice’s opinion. “I learnt that you always have to have a back up plan how to get your money in.” “I now jump on support from all directions, I will not be in the same situation again.” “I learnt that you could not let yourself be blinded by one individual as unexpected events can happen which can stop project suddenly.” “You can do more than you think, most things are in our own control; you have to listen to the body and mental state it has to do with experience to know how to maintain balance in life.” Calle described himself as an optimistic person. He believes that “If goals are set, even if you fail along the way, you will start again but not from the beginning”. In common, most of the entrepreneurs said that they learned in terms of economic effects.
“Failure made me see things from different perspective; Business rivals can be our strategic partners in this very niche market.” On the other hand, Calle who did not apply any learned lessons actually made the same mistake again in a similar situation in the respect of his previous failure that he described. At the time of the interview being conducted, he is working on a project with a team that were formed among friends due to the convenience and he was not even expecting to “pull it through together”; however, he once again saw it as gaining experience. “I did not expect the team to really pull it through in my current project but I didn't mind I took it as a learning experience.”
DISCUSSION The previous finding results are interpreted and discussed in this section. Then, the observation and reflection are linked to theoretical insights within the aforementioned literature review in order to answer the research questions. When being asked what failure is, each respondent expressed their opinions differently from action-oriented notion like “quitting an entrepreneurial life” to abstract concept such as “the fear that is needed to overcome” basing on the statements from David and Anders respectively. However, the deeper investigation revealed that failures described by entrepreneurs are not the same as failures they had actually experienced. When every respondent started to elaborate on failures they had faced in their projects, the descriptions sometimes are dissimilar with the definitions they previously provided. For instance, Calle responded that entrepreneurial failure is “a lack of scalability” but his detailed answer suggested that the failure in his first entrepreneurial project is “an incompatible founding team”. This conflict demonstrates that the real failure entrepreneurs experienced can be differed from failure they had perceived. With the regard to failing experiences each respondent described, failures reported by all of them were connected to their goals. This can be clearly seen in the case of Anders. His goal is to create a co-working space for social entrepreneurs and he said the failure occured when the bad collaboration within his team made sponsors change their minds and no longer support hosting that co-working area. The correlation between failures and goals is comparable to findings by Ucbasaran et al.’s (2010) that failure is subjected to change by personal goals of entrepreneurs. No matter what cause of failure is – whether it is a mistake like “starting a project without a business model” in David’s case or a misfortune like “an unexpected divorce of investor that made him disregard the project” in Beatrice’s case, failure occurred when the entrepreneurs received negative outcomes from their entrepreneurial endeavor (Cannon & Edmondson, 2001) and realized they could not achieve the goals so they decided to end such initiatives (McGrath, 1999). This also aligns with our definition that entrepreneurial failure