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Reference

Cacciotti, G., Hayton, J. C., Mitchell, J. R., & Allen, D. G. (2020). Entrepreneurial fear of failure: Scale development and validation. Journal of Business Venturing, 35(5), 106041. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2020.106041

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🎙️✨ Welcome to Revise and Resubmit and to another episode of Weekend Classics.

I am glad you are here.

Some papers do not just study a phenomenon. They lean in close to the human condition. This one does exactly that. 💭📘

Today, I am exploring Entrepreneurial Fear of Failure: Scale Development and Validation by G. Cacciotti, J.C. Hayton, J.R. Mitchell, and D.G. Allen, published in the Journal of Business Venturing on 17 June 2020. And yes, this is an FT50-listed journal, which tells us something about the rigor. But what stays with me is not only the rigor. It is the recognition that entrepreneurship is not just about vision, hustle, and heroic perseverance. It is also about fear. Real fear. Quiet fear. The kind that sits beside ambition and asks what happens if this all falls apart. 🎧🔥

What I find deeply compelling about this paper is that it refuses the easy version of the story. It does not ask people to imagine failure from a safe distance. It does not treat fear of failure as a fixed personality flaw. Instead, it turns toward entrepreneurs in the mess of lived experience, where uncertainty is not theoretical and risk is not a classroom exercise. There, fear appears as something more layered, more immediate, more human. It is cognitive, yes, but also affective. It is thought and feeling braided together. 🧠❤️

The authors build and validate a multidimensional scale to understand this fear as it is actually experienced by entrepreneurs. And in doing so, they give us something precious. They give us language for the invisible weather inside entrepreneurial life. 🌧️🚀 Concerns about money. Doubts about personal ability. Worries about social esteem. The ache of possibly not becoming who you hoped you could become.

That matters because once we measure something well, we stop romanticizing it poorly.

So in today’s episode, I want to sit with this paper not merely as a methodological contribution, but as a reminder that behind every venture is a person making meaning under pressure. Someone hoping, calculating, improvising, and at times trembling. 📚✨

If you enjoy these deep dives into classic research, please subscribe to Revise and Resubmit on Spotify, and also follow the YouTube channel Weekend Researcher 🔔🎥 You can also listen on Amazon Prime Music and Apple Podcast. Your support helps keep these conversations alive and thoughtful. 🙏

My thanks to the authors, G. Cacciotti, J.C. Hayton, J.R. Mitchell, and D.G. Allen, and to Elsevier, the publisher, for this remarkable contribution.

So here is the question I want to leave you with today 🤔💡

When we say an entrepreneur is brave, are we talking about the absence of fear, or about the strange and deeply human skill of learning how to continue while fear quietly remains?