Role of Mindfulness in Entrepreneurial Success: A Review

Abstract

The life of an entrepreneur is often stressful with more time spent at work making decisions, facing ever-growing market competition, and undertaking business risks. An entrepreneur is so deeply involved in their business that it is difficult to demarcate between the venture and the owner. The success of the venture highly reflects the competence and focused mindset of the entrepreneur. Such a dynamic business nature requires best practises that can enhance the cognitive capabilities of the entrepreneurs and make them more aware or mindful of present moment phenomena. In a context where many studies are done to unveil success factors of entrepreneurial ventures and still a significant portion of them struggle to survive and succeed in the market, it is high time to view factors affecting entrepreneurial success from a novel angle. Accordingly, this review aims at uncovering the links of mindfulness to entrepreneurial success via an extensive critical review of the extant literature. Considering the vast array of benefits of being mindful, it is recommended for entrepreneurs to engage more in practising mindfulness to make them more vigilant in capturing opportunities, making decisions, and escaping the failures of the past and anxiety about the future. However, given the controversial nature of certain findings in literature and the dearth of studies on mindfulness and entrepreneurial success, the increasing necessity of further conceptual and empirical research in this area is explicit.