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Fail Fast, Learn Fast: Understanding The Process Of Learning From Failure In Smes, Nikolina Koporcic, David Sjödin, Marko Kohtamäki, Vinit Parida

Association of Marketing Theory and Practice Proceedings 2023

‘Fail fast and learn fast’ is a common principle advanced to quickly grow and scale startups and SMEs. However, the literature is lacking detailed insights into how such learning processes are organized. The paper aims to investigate how knowledge-intensive SMEs learn from failures through organizational learning processes. Case studies of three high-tech SMEs that operate in a highly dynamic context are presented. The findings are summarized in the learning from failure process, which includes three phases, each with underlying sub-activities and principles: 1) failure recognition, 2) interactive sensemaking, and 3) organizational adaptation. We summarize our insights into a framework disentangling …