Do mentors influence the effects of the entrepreneurial programs of early-stage start-ups pivot decisions? An RCT experiment

Do mentors influence the effects of the entrepreneurial programs of the early-stage start-ups pivot decisions? We address our research question investigating the role of mentors supporting entrepreneurs’ decisions in an early-stage training program, receiving the scientific method or the effectuation approach. In order to achieve our goal, we based our research on Kram’s Mentor Role theory (Kram, 1985) and we applied it to the scientific method, according to the theory-and-evidence-based approach (Agarwal et al., 2024), and to Saras Sarasvathy's theory of Effectuation (Sarasvathy, 2008), related to the evidence-based approach. Previous research, in fact, has considered mentors as experienced people who can support mentees’ decisions, career-development and activities within organizations, by coaching, challenging, and directing (Kram, 1985; Wilson and Elman, 1990). Moreover, mentorship is an important building block of educational programs within entrepreneurial support programs (Yitshaki, 2025). Nevertheless, little is known about the role of mentors in start-ups that have received an Entrepreneurial training (ET) program specifically based on the scientific and effectuation approach to decision-making. In this vein, we discuss how mentors’ support can change decision-making processes, in terms of radical and incremental pivot decisions, of entrepreneurs adopting the scientific approach and the effectuation approach. To investigate our question, we collected evidence via a randomized control trial (RCT) in which 308 early-stage start-ups from Italy of a pre-acceleration program were randomly assigned to “treatment” (scientific, effectuation) and “control” group. Each start-up in treatment and control groups had from 0 to 7 mentors, from the beginning of the program. We observed firms throughout and post-training and we compared differences concerning radical and incremental pivot decisions between firms with mentors and without mentors in the treatment and control group, focusing on mentors’ support. We find that start-ups with mentors are not more likely to pivot radically, on the other hand they make more incremental pivots than firms with no mentors. In particular, firms with mentors trained by scientific method are more likely to pivot incrementally than firms in the effectuation and control group. We suggest that it is due to mentoring that reinforces the scientific approach and realigns what entrepreneurs have learnt during the training program. These findings highlight important insights for mentorship research, showing how mentors can shape decision-making processes in ET programs, for the literature on entrepreneurial decision-making and for stakeholders involved in designing training programs that support entrepreneurs.