This paper sheds light on entrepreneurial learning and makes a call for action. The statistics show the importance of entrepreneurial organizations to every nation’s economic success. To foster this success, it is imperative that all parties involved help entrepreneurs learn how to successfully learn and grow. In this sense, the implications of these findings are significant. For academic institutions, it is imperative not only to teach the functional skills necessary for effective entrepreneurial activity, but also to prepare students to become more effective in their role as ‘lifelong learners’. Younger entrepreneurs need to be conditioned to understand the key dimensions of on-the-job and informal learning if they are to achieve and maintain success.

Entrepreneurial activity is vital to the health of any country and the vast majority of entrepreneurial organizations start as small businesses which are the engines of economic growth (Ireland and Webb, 2007). Today, entrepreneurship is one of the most popular topics in business literature and a wide range of research is underway in virtually every dimension of entrepreneurship to explore what is needed for successful entrepreneurial launches, proper capitalization, market penetration, and rapid ramp-up (Kim and Miner, 2007). Research makes it very clear that entrepreneurs have certain traits and characteristics that are associated with their vocation, such as a propensity for risk-taking, high levels of creativity and innovation, a strong desire for autonomy, and disregard for bureaucracy (Barringer and Ireland, 2010).

It is interesting to note that while research on the functional skills, talents, and behaviors of entrepreneurs is well documented, our understanding of successful entrepreneurial learning is still in its infancy (Dermot, 2012). Amidst all these efforts to better understand what it takes for entrepreneurial success, there is a research gap on how entrepreneurs learn and develop as their organizations grow and mature. More specifically, the question is, How do entrepreneurs learn and develop as they face the various challenges associated with the business cycles of their organization?

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