Successful and Unsuccessful routes for entrepreneurs: lessons from an Entrepreneurial Regional Project Program

There is a significant research on entrepreneurs, but none to very few on Financed Entrepreneurial Project Programs at the regional level. This chapter attempts to identify which of the several activities developed in the “Leiria Entrepreneurial Project Program”, helped to promote business acceleration and, to identify successful and unsuccessful routes for the stimulus of the entrepreneurship activity. Secondary and primary data were collected to answer the research questions. The results reveal that “Mentoring”, "Participation in Workshops" and “Conferences” activities are the most important to stimulate the spirit of entrepreneurship. The entrepreneurs' success route lies on the competencies of the business promoters, on multidisciplinary teams capable of creating a product/service, and on the maturity of the business idea planning in all its phases. The entrepreneur 's failure path lies on the inability to clearly identify the business idea, its development and its implementation. The findings provide an important theoretical contribution as it unveils an unexplored filed. They also help decision-makers to select the entrepreneurial actives that most help entrepreneurs to boost their business.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio