About the lives and times of extraordinary entrepreneurs: The methodological contribution of autobiographies to the life course theory of entrepreneurship

There have been recent calls in the entrepreneurship literature to shift research paradigms toward more relevant, contextual, and process-oriented research. We respond by proposing a life course perspective on firms their creators using alternative sources of information, specifically history data included autobiographies written founders well-known firms. Autobiographies as self-narratives describing how evolved any dramatic events that interrupted process provide unique insights not obtainable from other materials. This paper introduces retrospective analysis entrepreneurs evolution firms, including critical stages transitions, reflection what was achieved not. To guide researchers, we an overview methodologies used analyze autobiographies, discuss strengths limitations, suggest potential designs.