Entrepreneurs play a critical role in our market economies and are typically described as the powerhouse of a national economy, activating and facilitating economic activity. We know that entrepreneurs can initiate economic development by breaking up its current status through innovations. More recent studies describe entrepreneurs also as microinstitutional agents that promote institutional bottom-up change, such as the support of market functioning and the facilitation of market access.

Therefore, entrepreneurs are a critical determinant of the level of success, growth, and prosperity in economies. Effects that become even more important in a moment of crisis, a crisis that we are currently all facing due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Professor Francesco Rattalino and Assistant Professor Alysa Sydow, authors of “Two-sides of the same coin: why entrepreneurs can transform the crisis into business opportunities to create more impactful and longlasting ventures”, explain why entrepreneurs can transform the COVID-19 crisis into business opportunities for long-lasting ventures. They describe three must-haves of an entrepreneurial mindset, namely:

1) prosocial and balance a plurality of values,

2) be a founder of a business that you would like your grandchildren to see,

3) show empathy with the people in your network to navigate through stormy times,

that help us to tackle the fundamental structural faults of our economic system.

This paper is part of the first series of impact papers produced by the school’s faculty on “Managing a Post-Covid19 Era”.

The ESCP Impact Papers are meant to help business and society following this unprecedented pandemic and aimed at providing insights into management knowledge that is applicable to not only practising managers, but also other stakeholders, namely the European community, students and society.

If you would like to find out more, please click here to our latest impact paper discussing the topic above in more depth.

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