Entrepreneurial leaders are acquiring the skills, knowledge and capabilities to be leaders, but the context in which they operate also allows them to apply these skills in an environment that tends to be a little more forgiving of mis-steps and mistakes. It may be that startup organizations give entrepreneurial leaders the perfect arena in which to ‘fail fast’ as leaders. In real time they can develop the theoretical knowledge about how to be a leader, but then instantly apply that knowledge in the real world. By having this instant feedback loop of what is working and not working in a particular context, they are able to hone and develop their skills, knowledge and capabilities and at the same time see how the application of those entrepreneurial leadership skills can influence and shape their organization.

Much recent academic research on leadership and most popular business books focus on successful, long established companies and analyze their approach to leadership. From this standpoint, the authors try to understand how leadership lessons learned from these successful companies can be applied to other organizations. Straight from the Gut (by Jack Welch, former CEO of GE), the HP Way by David Packard (ex-CEO of Hewlett Packard) and Direct from Dell (written by the current CEO of Dell, Michael Dell) have all added to the popular view that there are set rules, principles, and ways of behaving that are true in all circumstances, and that the way to be a leader is to learn the ‘rules’ of leadership from experienced practitioners and then implement these rules in the way you operate as a leader.

Meanwhile, in academic research, organizational leadership and its link to the performance of organizations has a rich history and is a popular field to explore (Shrader and Siegel, 2007). Many authors focus on quantitative studies of leadership, involving questions that ask leaders how they think they lead and how they think their leadership has an influence on their organization (Letich et al., 2013).

The Messiness of Real Time, Entrepreneurial Leadership