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Random Entrepreneurship/Success Studies Thread

ChrisV

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Everyone knows how I love my research articles.

So I'm going to post random studies to this thread as I come across them

Growth mindset intervention boosts confidence, persistence in entrepreneurship students

A low-cost intervention aimed at fostering a growth mindset in students gave the students more confidence in their entrepreneurship abilities and helped them persist when challenges arose.

"The finding is valuable because efficacy, or confidence in one's abilities, and perseverance are powerful motivators and are critical for career development in entrepreneurship," says Jeff Pollack, second author of a paper on the work and an associate professor of entrepreneurship at North Carolina State University.

"Growth mindsets - the belief that human attributes are malleable - help students to flourish," says Jeni Burnette, lead author of the paper and an associate professor of psychology at NC State. "For this study, we focused on fostering a growth mindset of entrepreneurship - the idea that everyone can improve their entrepreneurship ability."

For the study, researchers worked with 238 undergraduate students. One group of 120 students received three growth mindset video modules focused on the idea that, with time, effort and energy, individuals can improve their entrepreneurship ability. A control group of 118 students watched three video modules that focused on misconceptions about entrepreneurship.


Full article here:

 
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ChrisV

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In an analysis of hundreds of basketball half-time speeches, Berkeley Haas Professor Emeritus Barry Staw and colleagues found that anger goes farther than inspiration. Researchers found a significant relationship between how negative a coach was at half-time and how well the team played in the second half: The more negativity, the more the team outscored the opposition.

Berkeley Haas: Winning coaches’ locker room secret
 

A_Random_Guy

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The more negativity, the more the team outscored the opposition.

Interesting read. The three primal emotions in human are love, lust and anger.

Since we are being fed with success stories of underdogs, we picture ourselves as movie/anime characters who become dark horses, climb from the bottom to the top. This is why when we say success, we generally relate it to struggle, failure, hardship, pain rather than love, inspiration, kindness.

However, emotional motivation gives a sudden outburst of energy. Not for long, but an instantaneous boost of morale.
 
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ChrisV

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"It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things into what you’re doing. Picasso had a saying: good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas, and I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world." – Steve Jobs

"If you're gonna make connections which are innovative ... you have to not have the same bag of experiences as everyone else does, or else you're going to make the same connections as everybody else, and then you won't be innovative, and then nobody will give you an award." – Steve Jobs

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” – Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood




Openness to Experience Enhances Creativity: The Mediating Role of Intrinsic Motivation and the Creative Process Engagement - Journal of Creative Behavior, 2016
 

ChrisV

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Throughout our lives, we set ourselves goals — to pass an exam, run a marathon, lose 10 kilograms of excess weight or gain a promotion. Given the importance of such goals to our physical and psychological wellbeing, it’s not surprising that there’s has been a wealth of research into how best to set, work towards, and achieve them.

But let’s say you succeed — what then? Psychologists have paid less attention to people’s behaviour after they’ve achieved their goals. And although it’s generally good for us to continue to study, exercise, eat healthily, work hard, and so on, this doesn’t always transpire. For example, one follow-up of contestants who’d won the weight-loss TV show The Biggest Loser found that six years on, most weighed even more than they had at the start of the show.

However, a recent study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Attitudes and Social Cognition offers a solution. People are more likely to maintain good behaviours, the researchers find, if instead of thinking about achieving a goal as “arriving at a destination,” they view it as “completing a journey.”
 

ChrisV

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ChrisV

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Research: Valedictorians Rarely Become Rich — The Average Millionaire's College GPA Was 2.9

"But how many of these number-one high-school performers go on to change the world, run the world, or impress the world?" Eric Barker says in his new book, "Barking Up the Wrong Tree," which cites the research. "The answer seems to be clear: zero.”

Barking up the wrong tree is in the list of Books Fastlaners Recommend"

The the article cites research presented in a book by Karen Arnold:
Lives of Promise: What Becomes of High School Valedictorians: A Fourteen-year Study of Achievement and Life Choices (Jossey Bass Social and Behavioral Science Series)

Read More:

 

A_Random_Guy

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@ChrisV

It seems that the traits that set one up for exceptional success in high school and college — “self-discipline, conscientiousness and the ability to comply with rules” — are not the same traits that lead individuals to start disruptive companies or make shocking breakthroughs.

Why is this so? Isn't hard work, self-discipline, conscientiousness etc. actually good?
 

ChrisV

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@ChrisV



Why is this so? Isn't hard work, self-discipline, conscientiousness etc. actually good?
I think it depends on the aspect of Conscientiousness. There are two facets: Orderliness and Industriousness.

Orderliness is organization. These people tend to be conformists and rule-followers.

Industriousness is the propensity to work hard.

Valedictorians are very orderly and rule-abiding. Entrepreneurs, by definition, have to be willing to break a few rules.

They're creative. They're high in trait Openness to Experience. I don't have data on Valedictorians, but i would think they're low on Openness.

Jordan Peterson on the personality of Entrepreneurs:


The answer to this question is: I don't really have good data on it, so I don't know. But in general, yes, Conscientiousness is conducive to success. It may be the Openness to Experience aspect offsetting things.
 
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JonnyC

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Why is this so? Isn't hard work, self-discipline, conscientiousness etc. actually good?

Those are great qualities to have in any arena, however to agree with @ChrisV a lot of entrepreneurs have a propensity to break rules or find a way to cheat the system in their youth. I know for myself, I had quite a chip on my shoulder growing up and never really trusted authority. I did minor bad things as a kid and it turns out that a lot of entrepreneurs do the same.

It's more so your ability to see the whole system or game that's being played, take a step back and figure out how to win it with or without following the rules... or even asking "why even would I even want to win at this game? I'll go play another one with better prizes."

In my case, I never saw the benefits of being an employee my whole life. It just didn't square, I did the math and realized my lifetime earnings wouldn't give me any freedom to do the things I wanted to do, and it didn't fill me with a sense of purpose or ownership. So I decided, to the best of my ability, I would avoid being an employee because that game sucked.

Most people don't take that step back because they are followers and want to be told how to succeed. That's why I laugh when people are worried "Wouldn't everyone be an entrepreneur if you could make a lot of money at it?" because I know you're only competing with ~1 to 5% of the population, it's a lot less crowded than you think.

If you're an entrepreneur, I think generally you're more likely to have been a bit of a shithead or rebel in your younger days. Hopefully grown out of it by now!
 

ChrisV

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@A_Random_Guy

This article may be helpful. It's a list of different professions suited to different ratings on the Big 5 scale:


You can take a free Big 5 questionaire here:


or this is one I highly recommend for $8, and he gives great explanations of what they all mean:

 

Bekit

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Why is this so? Isn't hard work, self-discipline, conscientiousness etc. actually good?
It's not that these things aren't good. It's that these things aren't rewarded in the same way in school as in the rest of life.

I was someone who did very well in school, only to struggle massively in the workforce.

It's very disorienting when you learn to play and win by one set of rules, and then you enter a whole different game with a whole different set of rules.

Especially when you're expecting the rules to be the same, because everyone told you that you were destined for great things based on your grades and academic performance.

It takes a while to even realize that the rules are different.

Then, it takes a while to learn what the new rules are.

Adapting yourself to a whole new set of standards can be very challenging, as it goes against the whole way you've seen the world ever since childhood.

One big thing that's relevant: as an entrepreneur, you have to know how to handle failure. But as a person who always did well in school, you DON'T know how to handle failure. I never failed a test. I never struggled to comprehend a subject. I sailed through most classes and barely studied. When that's the story of your life, you arrive at adulthood and you're totally unequipped with the tools to handle failure. Contrast that with the person who got a 2.9 GPA and made it to graduation anyway. That person knows a TON more about how to bounce back from failure, keep trying, and ultimately succeed.
 
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ChrisV

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It also seems that orderly people thrive in organized environments.

They don't do so well in chaotic environments.

On the other hand disorderly people thrive in chaotic environments, while they don't do so well in orderly environments.

School = orderly. Entrepreneurship = chaotic.

Could explain the disparity.

Now I'm pretty sure that industriousness (hard-working) is just universally beneficial.

For those that don't know how these break down:

26884
 

ChrisV

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Oh damn, I found a study correlating all the SUB-traits to career success:

26886

But keep in mind.. it's somewhat different for every career. there are going to be traits universally concussive to success, but there are going to be traits that are only conducive to certain positions. For example, a very orderly person probably won't make a great artist, but they'll make a great accountant.
 

A_Random_Guy

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It's more so your ability to see the whole system or game that's being played, take a step back and figure out how to win it with or without following the rules... or even asking "why even would I even want to win at this game? I'll go play another one with better prizes."
So you mean that we should not only think out of the box but also change your box if it has defects and can't be processed.

In my case, I never saw the benefits of being an employee my whole life. It just didn't square, I did the math and realized my lifetime earnings wouldn't give me any freedom to do the things I wanted to do, and it didn't fill me with a sense of purpose or ownership. So I decided, to the best of my ability, I would avoid being an employee because that game sucked.

Yes. Most of the time we think that changing companies to get a 30% pay raise means we are closer to financial freedom while we're clearly not.
Most people don't take that step back because they are followers and want to be told how to succeed.
I still have this habit of being told what to do if I'm going wrong. Your words are 100% true. It halts the ability to think. I am changing that.
 
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A_Random_Guy

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One big thing that's relevant: as an entrepreneur, you have to know how to handle failure. But as a person who always did well in school, you DON'T know how to handle failure. I never failed a test. I never struggled to comprehend a subject. I sailed through most classes and barely studied. When that's the story of your life, you arrive at adulthood and you're totally unequipped with the tools to handle failure. Contrast that with the person who got a 2.9 GPA and made it to graduation anyway. That person knows a TON more about how to bounce back from failure, keep trying, and ultimately succeed.
In my case, I was told that I was brilliant in high school, and I ranked among the top 3 students every year. However, I started getting lazy. Last year, I couldn't understand anything in a subject because I didn't study and I got so depressed that I stopped going college for a year. It was my FTE and now I am trying to climb back up.
Thank you guys for such wise words, I read them yesterday and I am understanding them now.
 

A_Random_Guy

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Oh damn, I found a study correlating all the SUB-traits to career success:
Sorry, I can't understand this.
I took that personality test and also read about the jobs best suitable for each trait.

Have you read the book "Good to Great"? It links Passion, Economic Engine and Talent together.
Do you think personality outweighs talent or is it the other way around?
For example, I want to be a salesperson but I am an introvert. Is it worth making it my career?
Another case is, I want to become a lawyer but I am agreeable. Is it bad for my job?
 

ChrisV

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Sorry, I can't understand this.

Sorry, the higher the correlation number, the closer the link. A .22 correlation is higher than a .05.

Do you think personality outweighs talent or is it the other way around?
For example, I want to be a salesperson but I am an introvert. Is it worth making it my career?
Another case is, I want to become a lawyer but I am agreeable. Is it bad for my job?

This is a really good question. Well there's something called "learned extroversion" and for agreeableness you can do Assertiveness Training.

So I think personality mostly tells us where to start. If you want to do something, don't let a personality test tell you not to do it. It should just give you a better idea of what skills you need to develop. And there may be certain subcategories within that field that you can pick. For example, perhaps telephone sales is more suitable for an introvert than other types. Or perhaps there are certain specializations in law that are better for the agreeable. Maybe something that involves less head-butting. Or perhaps you really want to be a criminal defense lawyer. Maybe Assertiveness Training would be good to accomplish that.
 
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ChrisV

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Rawseed

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A new study from Harvard Business School says companies that let their employees "work from anywhere" and work whenever they want, wind up with employees who are more loyal, more productive, and cost less.

Makes sense.

That's the autonomy part of the Drive trifecta (autonomy, mastery, and purpose).
 

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I am hoping to see you in the Forbes @ Psychology Department
 

ChrisV

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Big 5 traits of major innovators:

 

ChrisV

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The pursuit of basic life goals, such as avoiding diseases, maintaining romantic relationships, being accepted by others, achieving social status, and caring for family members, help foster a sense of purpose in life, as they are relevant to our evolutionary fitness, suggests a new study (n=1,993)

 
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