Second-Career Entrepreneurs: A Multiple Case Study Analysis of Entrepreneurial Processes and Antecedent Variables

Abstract

We use open-ended interviews and focus groups to construct a composite model of activities constituting the entrepreneurial process for seven retirees from a Fortune 100 corporation who started second-career businesses. Our results show that retirees’ prior employment experience modifies the nature of entrepreneurial processes used to get into business. Technology-oriented retirees followed incremental processes, using fewer steps in the process, with an indeterminate inception in the development of required skills, in starting related-lifestyle businesses. Retirees with management skills used punctuated equilibrium processes, having an abrupt beginning and requiring more steps in the process of starting unrelated-growth/investment businesses. Management-oriented retirees networked more In the entrepreneurial process than technology-oriented retirees. Technology-oriented retirees more likely viewed departure as involuntary; their entrepreneurial processes derived from starting conditions (e.g., old job or company). Retirees with management skills tended to view departure as voluntary; their entrepreneurial processes advanced toward desired end states. We identify propositions for future testing and discuss implications for corporations, retirees, and researchers.