Entrepreneurs and mountaineers face challenges that share many characteristics distinct from mainstream society and managerial activity: lofty goals, individualistic efforts, risky and highly uncertain environments, and severe resource constraints. A qualitative explication of this analogy is extended with a comparative quantitative examination of shared individual traits (risk avoidance, optimism, flexibility and overconfidence) among mountaineers, entrepreneurs and control subjects. The findings provide support for an entrepreneur–mountaineer analogy, suggesting common themes for the roles of both groups. These results are integrated with previous research on the mountaineering personality to suggest ways by which the two groups could learn from each other. The analogy is then extended beyond the individual level by explicit mapping between entrepreneurs and mountaineers in terms of objectives, strategies, resources and risks faced. This mapping is used to suggest areas of entrepreneurship research that may benefit from the adoption of the analogy perspective.
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