Lessons learned from failures: how innovative entrepreneurs can learn from direct and indirect experiences of failures? A scoping review of the literature

Fostering innovation projects while decreasing the likelihood of their failure is a complex task for both entrepreneurs and academics, one of the most important way will be to learn from past failures. Literature on the role of learning activities is extensive, but little research has focused on different forms of learning from failures for entrepreneurs in an innovative context. This article investigates how two mechanisms of learning from direct and indirect failures can improve innovative performance by avoiding theses failures or mistakes in the future. Relying on a scoping review about learning from direct and indirect experience of failures, this article advances knowledge by generating a framework which bring together two forms of learning from failures and their determinants. Results show that it will be desirable to tackle direct relationship between these two kinds of learning and their determinants.