Entrepreneurs Who Think Like Scientists Get Better Results
Entrepreneurship theory and practice emphasize the role of intuition, individual characteristics and chance in determining the business outcome. What happens if the entrepreneur acts like a scientist and chooses to articulate a theory, develop hypotheses, test them, and critically evaluate the results? Arnaldo Camuffo, Alessandro Cordova, Alfonso Gambardella, and Chiara Spina tackled this question in "A Scientific approach to entrepreneurial decision-making: evidence from a randomized control trial," a paper that was recently accepted for publication in the journal Management Science. The study was conducted in 2016-17 at Bocconi University and ICRIOS (Invernizzi Center for Research in Innovation, Organization, Strategy & Entrepreneurship). The authors provided a hundred Italian startups with a training program to improve their decision-making.
"We showed that entrepreneurs who behave like scientists perform better," Camuffo says. "We observed that they earn more revenues and pivot to a greater extent to a different idea. They can better mitigate their biases or inaccuracy when they analyze market signals, thus reducing the likelihood of incurring false positives and false negatives. Using a scientific approach to develop and evaluate entrepreneurial ideas might constitute a paradigm-shift in entrepreneurship education." The same team is working on replications of this study in other settings, including different industries and high-tech startups, in European and non-European countries. In an extension of the study, authors will also try to understand under which conditions the application of the scientific approach to business decision-making works better.
Read more about this topic:
Nicolai Foss. Entrepreneurship Goes beyond Startups
Carlo Mammola and Luigi Mastromauro. Predicting Startup Success with Data
Good Business Plan not Enough for Success. Interview to Alisée de Tonnac
Creating an Identikit of Entrepreneurs from 1850 to Present
Grow Your Business but Minimize the Risks
The Key Role of Taxation Regimes for Startups
A Small Fee for Business Training Improves Course Attendance
Family Ownership Helps Cope with Political Uncertainty
Experimental DecisionMaking Approach Attracts Funding
Avocado Toast Leads to Hot Brooklyn Startup. Interview to Alessandro Biggi
Turning "Spotify for Textbooks" into $4.8 mln. Interview to Perlego
Looking at Gender Bias in Funding Yields a Surprise Result
Family Firm Governance Results Linked to Context
Social Networks Foster Entrepreneurship
Taking Texting to the Next Level with Kaleyra. Interview to Dario Calogero
Connecting the Dots on How WWI Unleashed new Business Performance