It has been proposed that entrepreneurs with few socioeconomic resources engage in different entrepreneurial processes than more privileged entrepreneurs. However, it remains unclear what actions socioeconomically marginalized entrepreneurs might need to adopt to obtain successful outcomes. Increasingly, it is believed that individual entrepreneurs should be proactive, innovative, and take risks – in line with a firm-level view of entrepreneurial orientation (EO). However, whether or not this is the case for marginalized entrepreneurs remains unclear – a glaring omission in the literature given that such persons make up a large share of entrepreneurs internationally. To consider a more pluralistic understanding of entrepreneurial processes, we content analyze a particularly effective, and perhaps the best-studied, approach to entrepreneurship education and training (EET) for marginalized entrepreneurs: personal initiative training for entrepreneurs (PIE; Frese et al., 2016). Unlike other approaches, PIE training focuses on promoting specific actions among entrepreneurs via short-hand heuristics, known as action principles. Within PIE training, we identify 101 action principles and derive 21 first-order and seven second-order themes. These seven second-order themes share three underlying dimensions: proactivity, innovation, and risk-mitigation – partially diverging from the traditional understanding of EO. Our results raise important theoretical questions to be tested in future research to better understand, and support, marginalized entrepreneurs.
