Abstract:
Studies on moderators of the innovation performance relationship in entrepreneurship research are scarce. Thus in this paper we use a dataset consisting of 416 entrepreneurs from the German federal state of Thuringia in order to examine the moderating effect of the Big Five personality traits extraversion, openness and conscientiousness on the relationship between entrepreneurial innovation and exit by failure in highly innovative industries. Correspondingly, we identify exit by failure with the help of bankruptcy information and self-reports. In order to account for self-selection into innovative entrepreneurship, stratification on the propensity score is utilized to overcome self-selection bias. After accounting for self-selection into innovation, we find that personality moderates the innovation failure relationship. Extraversion strengthens the negative effect of innovation on exit by failure. In contrast, openness and conscientiousness weaken the negative effect of innovation on entrepreneurial failure.