Do entrepreneurs always benefit from business failure experience?

Business failure and its effect on entrepreneurial engagement has attracted substantial scholarly attention in entrepreneurship research. We contend that knowledge is lacking on the entrepreneurial learning mechanism and entrepreneurial alertness condition under which business failure experience influences new venture performance. In an empirical examination of 240 entrepreneurs operating in multiple industries in a sub-Saharan African country, we use a longitudinal data set to show that business failure experience does not always influence new venture performance. Rather, business failure experience influences new venture performance when it is channelled through entrepreneurial learning under conditions of increasing levels of entrepreneurial learning and a greater degree of alertness to new business opportunities. We discuss these findings and provide avenues for extending this emerging area of scholarly research.