LEARNING IN ENTREPRENEURIAL FIRMS: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY D. RAVASI Bocconi University C. TURATI University of Lecce G. MARCHISIO SDA Bocconi School of Management C. D. RUTA Bocconi University 1. INTRODUCTION Research on learning processes in entrepreneurial firms is still at an early stage (Agndal, 1999; Minniti and Bygrave, 2001). Past studies of entrepreneurial cognition tend to focus on issues such as risk taking (e.g. Brockhaus, 1980; Begley and Boyd, 1987; Brockhaus and Horowitz, 1986) or opportunity recognition (e.g. Palich and Bagby, 1995; Shane, 2000), whereas the learning processes that occur as entrepreneurs accumulate and organize knowledge and information within (e.g. Van de Ven and Polley, 1992; McGrath, 1995) and across development efforts (Minniti and Bygrave, 2001) are still underexplored phenomena. Learning is intrinsic to entrepreneurial action. In cognitive terms, entrepreneurial innovation can be conceived as a process of building and refining a set of knowledge structures – technologies, routines, interpretations, etc. — that expand and transform an initial intuition into a viable new product or service, a new production process or a new way to serve the market. The central argument of this chapter is that learning in entrepreneurial firms can fruitfully be conceived as a collective process involving a variety of internal and external contributors. An established stream of literature contends that the development of entrepreneurial ideas requires contributions of a different nature from a range of actors, whose knowledge and skills are complementary to the entrepreneurs’ (Aldrich and Zimmer, 1986; Birley, 1985; Larson, 1991). Industrial and research partners, suppliers, clients, consultants, and venture capitalists offer contributions that often go beyond the physical content of the exchange: they contribute to the development and refinement of the technologies embodied in new products and services, and of the organizations that produce and deliver them. In this chapter, building on findings from a multiple case study, we discuss factors that affect the G.Corbetta, M. Huse, D. Ravasi (eds.), Crossroads of Entrepreneurship, 165-184