ENTREPRENEURIAL LEARNING IN THE CONTEXT OF FAILURE AND CREATION OF NEW BUSINESS APRENDIZAGEM EMPREENDEDORA NO CONTEXTO DE FRACASSO E CRIAÇÃO DE NOVOS NEGÓCIOS

This research aims to describe the career and the entrepreneurial learning of micro-enterprises owners that identified new opportunities after the business failure. The methodology consists of a qualitative and exploratory study, with a cross-section approach and longitudinal perspective. Two entrepreneurs participated in the study, selected by convenience and availability, based on established criteria. Data collection was conducted through in-depth interviews, the interviews were recorded and transcribed. The dates were analyzed using content analysis. The study shows that new knowledge emerged from a learning journey in the context of business failure. It is learning about yourself, persistence, and resilience to succeed in new activities; about business and failure, flexibility to change the focus; on networks and relationships, as experience working with partners, employees and establish a network with the business partners; and on business management, to learn to minimize risks, because they understand that you must have a minimum knowledge of the market. During the development of new business, there is a predominance of exploration to transform the experience into entrepreneurial knowledge.


INTRODUCTION
In the scenario of a globalized economy, interest in entrepreneurship is growing as a continuous learning process, as well as in the search for means that lead to greater productivity, competitiveness, and innovation (POLITIS, 2005(POLITIS, , 2008. According to the Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service [SEBRAE] (2014), micro and small businesses in the country (MSBs) represent more than half of formal jobs and are already the main generators of wealth in commerce, representing 53.4 % of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Studies, however, indicate that it is still possible to verify the existence of other important, but not so positive, aspects to be evaluated in the Brazilian business structure, such as the fact that they present high rates of failure (ALBUQUERQUE; ESCRIVÃO; CARVALHO, 2015;MINELLO;SCHERER, 2014). Research carried out with 221 Brazilian startups, published by Dom Cabral Foundation [FDC] (2014), focusing on the analysis of the entrepreneur, their characteristics, and their business environment reveals that 25% of these companies die before their first year of life, and half of them in less than four years. Part of the factors that lead businesses to failure are related both to the entrepreneur's life plan and to their behavior and business process (COPE, 2011;GABRIELSSON, 2009;SEBRAE, 2014), where experimentation, trial, and error are common strategies for dealing with uncertainty and ambiguity (SARASVATHY, 2001).
It is a process where an entrepreneur's personal experience is transformed into knowledge, which in turn can be used to guide the choice of new opportunities (POLITIS, 2005). The experience arising from business failure represents the dynamic perspective of entrepreneurship, of what and how entrepreneurs learn, both personally and concerning business (COPE, 2011).
This context proposes a reflection on research that incorporates the entrepreneur's understanding of the learning process in the context of small businesses (BYGRAVE, 2010;HIGGINS;ASPINALL, 2011) and learning during the final phase of business life and its effects process (COPE, 2011;BLACKBURN;KOVALAINEN, 2009).
In this scenario, this research aims to describe the career and entrepreneurial learning of microenterprises owners that identified new opportunities after the business failure. Following this introduction, the second section addresses aspects related to entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial learning. The third section discusses the methodological procedures. In turn, the fourth section presents the analysis and discussion of the results and, finally, the final considerations. ISSN: 2763-8677 2 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND BUSINESS CREATION
Entrepreneurship comprises the process of identifying and exploring new opportunities. A more comprehensive approach to conceiving the nature of the entrepreneurial activity is provided by the behavioral perspective (SOUZA; GUIMARÃES, 2006). "The focus becomes the personal and organizational learning necessary for a person to adjust to changes in activities related to the entrepreneurial profession" (FILION, 1999, p. 11). The characteristics of entrepreneurs are linked to their respective historical contexts.
Entrepreneurs are continually learning and developing their business about a broader environment (COPE, 2005). Research should focus on who through learning can become an entrepreneur (RAE; CARSWELL, 2000). The main objective of this perspective is to discern the entrepreneurial process, defined as one that involves the functions, activities, and actions associated with the perception of opportunities and the engagement in the creation of organizations (BYGRAVE, 2010).
"The perception that it is desirable to start a new company is a result of the culture, the subculture of a person's family, teachers and colleagues" (HISRICH; PETERS, 2004, p. 31). Some studies indicate that "childhood experiences and the family environment seem to make a difference, [...] they encouraged responsibility, initiative, and independence" (SCHERMERHORN, 2007, p. 126). According to Hisrich, Peters, and Shepherd (2014), most entrepreneurs indicate that their spouses are their biggest supporters and allow them to devote the enormous amount of time needed to the new venture. Stimuli are also given by professors and peers, who can significantly influence individuals to consider entrepreneurship a desirable and viable career. Several other factors contribute to the formation of a new company (HISRICH et al., 2014): a) the infrastructure provided by the government; b) formal education (schooling). Its importance is reflected not only in the educational level but also in the fact that it continues to play a role in helping entrepreneurs deal with the problems they face; c) age (chronological), most entrepreneurs start their careers between 22 and 45 years old; d) previous business experience and administrative skills. According to the authors, "[...] most entrepreneurs report that their most significant venture was not the first. [...] The experience of the previous initiative is a relatively good predictor for the start of subsequent companies [...]" (PETERS; SHEPHERD, 2014, p. 18); and e) the available financial resources.
In the view of Gartner (1985), the creation of a new business is a multidimensional phenomenon, which cannot be seen in isolation and involves four dimensions: a) the individual, with their knowledge, a key element for the creation of the new business and its features; b) the organization, regarding the type of organizational entity created, involving strategic choices and other market characteristics; c) the environment, factors that encourage entrepreneurship, such as availability of capital, access to suppliers, access to consumers and new markets, government influences, among others; d) the process, when the entrepreneur perceives a business opportunity, accumulates resources, manufactures and sells products and services, builds the organization and responds to the government and society.

ENTREPRENEURIAL LEARNING IN THE FACE OF BUSINESS FAILURE
From the 1990s onwards, a new approach shifted attention to understanding entrepreneurship as a process characterized by significant critical learning events, as well as a continuous learning process (COPE, 2005(COPE, , 2011POLITIS, 2005POLITIS, , 2008. Politis (2005) argues that literature and research suggest that much of the entrepreneur's knowledge of learning that takes place within a business context is experiential, which implies considering past experiences. For this author, career experiences in the entrepreneurial process comprise: a) experiences in business creation, the set of knowledge that led to new opportunities; b) experiences in management, problem-solving, decision making and; c) experiences in the specific sector (POLITIS, 2005). These, when put into practice, promote increased effectiveness in recognizing an opportunity, as well as dealing with the responsibility of the new business. However, the author highlights that the transformation of experience into knowledge, in turn, has two possible strategies in decision-making by entrepreneurs: Exploitation (they learn from experiences when exploring old certainties); Exploration (they learn by exploring new possibilities) (MARCH, 1991). This transformation process is influenced by: a) results of previous events, successful experiences (greater exploitative degree) or failures (greater explorative degree); b) logic or the dominant rationality: causation (uses analysis and estimation techniques to explore and exploit existing and latent markets) or effectuation (does not start with pre-established goals, but follows those that emerge over time, according to aspirations and imagination of the entrepreneur) (SARASVATHY, 2001) and; c) career orientation regarding style: (i) linear, hierarchical progression within the company; (ii) specialist, long life in a specific occupation; (iii) spiral, movement of occupational areas and specialties; (iv) transitory, independence and challenges. The first two are characterized by the exploitative way of transforming experience into knowledge; the last two by explorative mode (BROUSSEAU; DRIVER; ENEROTH; LARSSON, 1996;POLITIS, 2005).
Business failure is seen as a complex process characterized by three interrelated phases in the learning process (COPE, 2011): a) reflection on the numerous costs of failure (financial, social, and psychological); b) critical reflection, a determined and conscious attempt to make sense of failure, with individual responses to failure and that can contribute to the development of future businesses (SHEPHERD, 2003) and; c) ISSN: 2763-8677 reflexive action, period of action during which the entrepreneur tries to move forward with failure to seek other opportunities.
As a result, the entrepreneur develops a high level of learning (COPE, 2005(COPE, , 2011: a) learning about himself, perceiving, understanding, and feeling about the world, making choices according to these new understandings (MEZIROW, 1991); b) learn about business and failure, understanding the processes and strategies that are employed within your organization (ARGYRIS; SCHÖN, 1978); c) learn about networks and relationships, develop social learning dynamic in the entrepreneurial process and; d) learn about business management (generative learning). Two approaches present themselves. The first is retrospective (adaptive), when the entrepreneur uses his experiential learning to reflect and, later, use it in future situations. The second, prospective (proactive), when the entrepreneur, by creating and anticipating experiences, instead of waiting for them, learned from them, by investing in new businesses before they had a total failure (GIBB, 1997;COPE, 2011).

RESEARCH METHOD
Based on the purpose of the research, a qualitative and exploratory study was chosen (RICHARDSON, 1999). Cases of failure are little explored, and, for this study, they will be understood as the discontinuity or death of the company for some reason, going beyond the relatively narrow conceptions of failure such as bankruptcy or liquidation (FERREIRA; OLIVA; SANTOS; GRISI; LIMA, 2012). The research is cross-sectional with a longitudinal perspective (VIEIRA, 2006). As for the selection of interviewees, Duarte (2012) reports that in qualitative studies this tends to be non-probabilistic, as its definition depends on the researcher's judgment and not on the drawing from the universe. Two entrepreneurs were selected for convenience; however, some criteria were established: that companies fit as micro-enterprises (ME), according to the number of employees (SEBRAE, 2015); that entrepreneurs act as owner-managers; and, that they have been unsuccessful and placed a new business. For this article, they were named "E1" and "E2".
The data collection procedure was carried out through an in-depth interview (MASSON, 1996). The recording of the interviews was carried out through direct recording, with the voluntary participation of the entrepreneurs and lasting approximately two hours.
For the treatment and analysis of the data, the method of content analysis was used, which consists of discovering the 'sense cores' that makeup communication and whose presence, or frequency of appearance, may mean something for the chosen analytical objective (BARDIN, 2011). By option of the researchers, it was preferred not to use software for textual analysis. The justification is given by the importance and richness of the data obtained, and so that contact with the factual reality arising from the reports of the entrepreneurs would not be lost.
To make the research result more reliable and to establish a context between theory, method, and result (VIEIRA, 2006), the following steps were established for data analysis and interpretation: a) transcription and reading of the interviews; b) description of respondents by joining statements based on themes or categories that were described a priori; c) writing the analysis of the results, having the narrative as a foundation (JOVCHELOVITCH; BAUER, 2003) and; d) finally, data interpretation establishing relationships and discussion around the evidence generated from the interviewee's life trajectory and their entrepreneurial learning in the face of business failure.
It should be noted that, in this study, the testimonies given by the entrepreneurs were inserted in the body of work in the exact way in which their statements were made. The results of the research carried out will be discussed below.

ANALYSIS OF RESULTS
This section aims to analyze and discuss data from interviews conducted with the two entrepreneurs, to compare the set of explanatory models from the previously selected literature with data from the field research.  At the time they created their first businesses, the two entrepreneurs were aged between 20 and 40 years, which confirms the studies by Hisrich et al. (2014). Currently, they comprise the age group between 41 and 60 years, which confirms the influence of the professional career history in the decision to launch new businesses (Peters & Shepherd, 2014) and demonstrates the professional experience in their areas of knowledge and the management of their companies. They also have a high level of formal education, an important circumstance for the development of the entrepreneur, as it plays a large role in helping them to deal with the problems they face in their business (Hisrich & Peters, 2014).

Entrepreneur Experiences -E1
I liked music and sometimes did little parties and, because of that, this ability, I decided to do a technical level in electronics [...]

Formal businesses: Startpoint and Mega Lux companies
The entrepreneur reports: [...]  When analyzing the entrepreneurial career experience for the creation of the first formal businesses, it was observed that E1 presents: a) experience in business creation, due to internships carried out during the technical school, in electronics, entertainment and, also, for the placement of informal businesses related to the maintenance of electronic equipment, given that he also worked in a computer company.
The respondent also presented a model of conduct of the uncles who had their own business, including having worked with one of them in electronics; b) experience in managing their informal businesses: as an instructor, salesperson in the companies where he worked in the execution of jobs in the electronics and computing area; c) experience in the specific sector, more precisely in electronics and computing. There is also the influence of friends and the support of his family in this entrepreneurial career. As reported in the interview, the company was formed by four young partners (one lawyer and three former FGV graduates), undercapitalized. And he said: "an operation to export auto parts for trucks, [...] we started to pursue and develop this market, the product was sold here in Brazil for 17 or 18 years until ISSN: 2763-8677 today it is a reality, it is a trailer mileage controller". According to the entrepreneur, there was a great deal of learning and experience in management: [...] which suffered a lot to introduce into the country, to sell, to fix the methodology, how to approach transport companies. And then we suffered from seasonality, policies, import licensing. It was the opening phase, of the government [...]. There was the question of exchange rate variation. That was suffering, we learned to be beaten. (our italics)

Separation from society, financial difficulties, and closing the business
As we have seen, the entrepreneur in this study has experiences with business management and in the specific sector, given the influence of his undergraduate professor and his family members because, as I said: "[...] all my entrepreneurial initiatives they were always supported by my family". This reinforces research that concludes with the importance of family influence in all phases of the business for success (Teixeira et al., 2011) and that people are more likely to become entrepreneurs if there is a model in the family or its environment (Filion, 1999 In the development of the E2 interview, the presence of several entrepreneurial characteristics is verified, such as: a) high need for achievement, when she declares: "[...] my entrepreneur was already there, kind of jumping [...]"; b) tolerance for ambiguity, when taking risks and withstanding situations with a high degree of uncertainty; c) self-esteem, when he decided to start the business, believing in himself; d) self-confidence and a yearning for independence, as he wants to be his boss, believes he is in control of his destiny.

ISSN: 2763-8677
Second deal: difficulties in the market for your product and closure In this new phase, the entrepreneur presents previous experiences in business creation and management practice. He is driven by passion and action when developing a technology to produce his product. And in the specific sector (foreign trade).
[...] as I had already hulled, shoeed horses, I came up with the idea of holding nails for horseshoes, and special aluminum shoes for high-performance sports horses, and I knew import and export. The entrepreneur reports an outburst: "[...] it is not possible for a product that has existed since the times of Rome [...] to withstand long journeys, so after six years I managed to produce a harpsichord that had quality, but that I couldn't produce in quantity and economic scale, and that was my breaker [...]".

THE PHASE OF DISCONTINUITY AND THE LEARNING JOURNEY
To achieve the objective of this study, the data collected in the interviews carried out with the two entrepreneurs will be grouped and analyzed together.

Entrepreneur E1
Reflecting on the discontinuity of his business and the start of a new one, he said, "Well, this isn't working, I'm going to take a break". But, according to him, it was not stagnant, as it appears: I had some products at home, computer, electronics, and such, and I thought about selling them because they were making volume at home, and at the time I put them on the internet to sell, on an auction site, and to my surprise, I put them up and sold them.
[...] so I was studying a computer segment, which is 2003, was still starting, wireless network equipment, so I started working with routers, the thing started to grow, I started to have suppliers who came to me offering products to work with another line of external wireless networks. [...] I set up an online store, Wireless Cia., and made a sales website. (Our italics)

Entrepreneur E2
When reflecting on the discontinuity, due to the closure of his business, the entrepreneur experienced professional reflexes, as he made a point of recording: At this point, it is important to highlight a common characteristic of the two entrepreneurs, flexibility.
Entrepreneurs are ready to admit their mistakes and problems, as well as change the course of action when plans are not working out (Hisrich & Peters, 2004). Entrepreneurs have always been guided by passion and action, anticipating problems in such a way that their lives could move forward without temporal obstacles. Therefore, it is observed, by the reports, that the "time" needed to recover from the pain and trauma generated by failures was not formalized, as stated by Cope (2011). This "time" was replaced by other investments, sometimes in charge of their formal and informal businesses, sometimes as an employee of some company. This "forward" behavior with failure to seek other opportunities is a feature of the third phase of the learning journey, reflective action. In this sense, we sought to describe the other phases of the learning journey: reflection on the costs of failure and critical reflection, to understand the entrepreneur's learning for the development of their future business. This is portfolio risk management".

Reflection on the costs of failure: financial, social, and psychological
During the entrepreneurial process and given career characteristics and motivations, entrepreneurs sought different types of events and learning situations.
The interviewee E1, for developing his professional career moving in occupational and specialty areas, given his specific knowledge of the computer and electronics sector, with creativity and personal development, the entrepreneur presents characteristics of spiral career orientation. However, due to the independence that he always displayed throughout his professional career, as, according to previous statements, he resigned, he also carries a transitory career style. For respondent E2, it appears that the entrepreneur also has a mix of style, due to his two occupations: specialist career guidance, as a teacher, who is still developing, improving his knowledge within this specialty (preparing for the doctorate), with this, it seeks achievement, prestige regarding motivation; spiral, managing partner/salesman, the position he occupies today at the head of his current business.
In these terms, the two entrepreneurs focus more broadly on an explorative way of transforming experience into knowledge (BROSSEAU et al., 1996).
During this learning journey, which, according to Cope (2005Cope ( , 2011, can stimulate different forms of high-level learning, fundamental for entrepreneurs, both in personal and business terms, the presence of the four forms of learning in the failure summarized below, in Figure 2, with the declarations of the entrepreneurs. The results found in this study should be interpreted exclusively concerning the interviewed entrepreneurs. New knowledge can emerge, as learning is a dynamic and continuous process, changing in the light of new experiences.
For future studies, it is suggested the replication of this research with a larger number of entrepreneurs, to verify the relevance of the results.