Personal Career Success in the Eyes of Nascent Entrepreneurs Internationally

Entrepreneurship is of key importance to economies and societies around the globe, and knowledge about how to support and stimulate it is needed. The purpose of this paper is to review the concepts of experiential learning, meaning-making of the self, and self-efficacy theory to investigate and understand young entrepreneurs’ career development choices and their definitions of career success. Findings draw attention to the complexity of the concept of a successful career, emerging from the shared experiences of the entrepreneurs from different parts of the world. It is clear that young entrepreneurs seek work-life balance and bring this concept into their vision of success. They are also driven by self-evolving forces that push them into domains of self-exploration and self-discovery. Given these findings, the study highlights the importance of supporting young people through the presentation of challenges, as well as inspiring role models and the opportunity to learn from them.