Emotional and behavioural drivers of entrepreneurial failure
EBW Global Psychologists are supporting Kat Niewiadomska of Audacity Activated Inc who is researching how Business Emotional Intelligence and cognitive biases may cause failures in start-ups.
Many start-ups fail to achieve a worthwhile return on investment for their funders, founders and employees. Failures in product development, to-market strategy, sales and delivery are commonly recognized. Founder failures are not as obvious and are harder to identify.
Founder failure exists beyond the initial monetary success or failure of a venture. How individuals perceive themselves and their ability to move forward considerably impacts their motivation and future venture success.
Critical failure points that entrepreneurs and innovators are susceptible to
Kat’s longitudinal research project started at Hult International Business School (Dubai) and explores how Business Emotional Intelligence and cognitive biases predict six critical failure points that entrepreneurs and innovators are susceptible to:
Failure to dream/vision
Failure to launch
Failure to learn/adapt
Failure to grow
Failure to enjoy/benefit
Failure to exit
The research has focused on developing a new assessment tool and collecting data using online assessments that measures these 6 failure points from entrepreneurs and start-up leadership teams based in the USA and the MENA Region.
Preliminary research findings
Preliminary findings indicate that specific emotional behaviours assessed in the EBW Business EQ assessment along with specific bias combinations, can be predictive of where and how founders will most likely fail.
Furthermore, the literature review and the research to date suggests it is possible to determine significant underlying causes of the failure modality and provide guidance and recommendations that will prevent entrepreneurs and innovators from stalling at a particular failure point.
Implications for founders and stakeholders
This research suggests that in order to adapt to the demands of entrepreneurship, a leader need not change who they are, but should rather learn to manage themselves and their relationships.
For leaders and managers, understanding and gaining accurate insight into how emotions impact on relationships and performance and being able to do something with that knowledge (developing and using their Business Emotional Intelligence) is now recognised as the key to realising the full potential of an organisation's human capital (Brooks and Nafukho 2006).
Kat’s research, supported by EBW Global, is aimed at developing models and tools to help founders and their stakeholders recognise and overcome these common failure points by improving their self awareness and guide their actions and mindsets towards entrepreneurial success.
It also hoped that it would enable stakeholders to evaluate founder profiles and to take risk-mitigating action - either through coaching and mentoring or through more robust team creation - to avoid founder-related company failure.
Next Steps - Get Involved
Kat is actively collecting more data by working with angel investors and entrepreneurs. If you would like to be involved in this research and receive preliminary insights into overcoming common failure points in start-up leadership teams, then please contact Kat directly using the below details:
Kat Niewiadomska - kat@audacityactivated.com
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