johnywrites.com

Category: Expertise

  • Why expertise theory applied in entrepreneurship is flawed?

    This is an updated version of my previous blog post that explored the flaws of effectuation.

    The series has two more posts which you can read here and here (Effectual Self-Organization: Could it be a mindful praxis for self-organization).

    The empirical evidence for effectuation came from the study of expert entrepreneurs conducted by Saraswathy. She contrasts her study on entrepreneurial expertise with entrepreneurial performance which has been traditionally studied either (1) as a set of personality traits of the entrepreneur that explains the success or failure of the firms he or she creates (Llewellyn and Wilson, 2003), or (2) as a set of circumstances or attributes of the project and its environment that contains the seeds of its success or failure (Thornton, 1999). In that, she conducted a cognitive science-based study of entrepreneurial expertise using think-aloud verbal protocols. Included in that, was a 17-page problem set of 10 typical decisions in a startup firm and had a representative sample of 27 expert entrepreneurs.

    I claim that this expertise framing of effectuation is flawed and counterproductive. I propose a much more scientific way of approaching or using effectuation, i.e. Effectuation as a praxis/logic/heuristics for self-organization in complex domains, not just as possessions of expert entrepreneurs.

    Following are some reasons why I consider the expertise theory of effectuation flawed;

    Firstly, entrepreneurship is a low validity domain (Kahneman and Klein, 2009) with extreme levels of complexity. To have genuine expertise to develop, the domains must be of high validity. i.e. “Skilled intuitions will only develop in an environment of sufficient regularity, which provides valid cues to the situation” (Kahneman and Klein, 2009). This was also previously spotted in a review by Shanteau(1992), in which he confirmed the importance of predictable environments and opportunities to learn them, in order to develop real expertise. To Kahneman and Klein(2009) prolonged practice and feedback that is both rapid and unequivocal are necessary conditions for expertise, provided by predictable environments. To be more specific about the contrast, Immediate Feedback, Repeatability & Regular environment are the fundamental conditions to develop expertise. Entrepreneurship is characterized by the opposite; Delayed feedback, Non-Repeatability, Irregular complex, and an emergent environment.

    Secondly, the effectiveness of deliberate practice as claimed by effectuation will not work in complex domains like entrepreneurship. There is no scientific evidence of it. Saraswathy(2008) defines an expert as someone who has attained a high level of performance in a domain as a result of years of experience and deliberate practice (Ericsson et al, 1993). Against this, Baron (2009) raised the important problem, ie “In what tasks or activities do successful entrepreneurs demonstrate expert performance?”. Advancing that point, Baron and Henry (2010) argued that deliberate practice may not be possible in entrepreneurship and that entrepreneurs instead either learn vicariously or transfer skills learned through practice in other domains into their new ventures. Frankish et al(2013) specifically questioned the idea of learning from experience. They pointed to the lack of repetition opportunities (owing to task diversity) and the difficulty of interpreting the various causes of new venture survival, suggesting that entrepreneurs improve performance only partially based on their experience in running new ventures. Further, in recent scholarly works, it has been demonstrated that deliberate practice may not guarantee better performance in extremely complex domains. A 2014 meta-analysis (Macnamara et al, 2014) has shown that deliberate practice only explained 26% of the variance in performance for games, 21% for music, 18% for sports, 4% for education, and less than 1% for professions. This further demonstrates a low connection between deliberate practice and performance in complex unstructured domains.

    Thirdly, expertise in complex social domains are distributed (Edwards, 2010). It is not necessary that an entrepreneur must be an expert in finance, accounting, programming, law, etc. Such expertise is distributed(and or extended) across various individuals(lawyer, doctor) institutions(law enforcement, companies) and artifacts(tools, software). etc. It is not even necessary that the entrepreneur has to know the entrepreneurial core activities. He or she can still win in case she or he is in the right high network place(e.g. Harvard, Stanford, etc.), get good people to mentor and work with (e.g. Facebook case of Sean Parker, Peter Thiel), get access to specialized institutions(e.g. YC in the case of Dropbox), have a rich family to support, etc. He can also fail despite all of this(see next).

    Fourthly, complex domains like entrepreneurship are subjected to various complexity laws like power laws, Mathew effects, reputation effects, ecosystem-embedded-preferential-attachment, etc. This invalidates success as a metric of expertise. Core events in complex systems like entrepreneurship never repeat in originality(strange attractor effect), feedback is delayed, and since complex systems are governed by power laws, small things(e.g. Harvard dorm Facebook) can result in huge success, and resource-rich interventions can fail(google plus). A tangent is that the emergent property of a system may not be the result of the expertise of a particular agent or agents, but because of the dynamics of the whole system co-evolving with the ecosystem as a whole. This may prevent us from establishing any valid causal relationship between expertise and performance in a domain like entrepreneurship. Thus in complexity, high performance may not guarantee success, in that, the success of an individual does not depend uniquely on the quality of performance (Barabási, 2018). 

    Fifthly, I believe that, like the personality view of entrepreneurial achievement (McClelland,1951, 1961; Llewellyn and Wilson, 2003), the expertise view may also have some unintended counter-productive effects. It can legitimize the hubris among successful entrepreneurs, and at the same time make the aspiring entrepreneurs think that they may require deliberate practice to become a successful entrepreneur, while in-fact success could be the result of complexity-effects like Mathew effects, reputation effects, preferential attachment, etc.

    Sixthly, A very important question to ask here is; Is it even desirable to start multiple ventures than make one single venture successful. Why do people start multiple ventures? Is it because they see it as playing chess or golf? Will they start another venture if they are incredibly successful in the first business? Will a few outlier cases like Elon Musk ethically suffice us to prescribe it as a standard scientific way of thinking about the world? Do multiple successful marriages make someone a marriage expert, or unlucky and bad at marriage?. The key point I am trying to make here is that in domains like chess, multiple success may be a sign of expertise. In many extremely complex questions of life, it may be undesirable.  

    Seventhly, as I have demonstrated, most effectuation principles correspond to the dynamics of self-organizing complex system. This means it must not be limited to entrepreneurs. Herbert Simon also hinted at this aspect and suggested that there might be a connection between effectuation and Near Decomposibility (Sarasvathy and Simon, 2000). According to him (Saraswathy, 2008), Near Decomposibility is an astonishingly ubiquitous principle in the architecture of rapidly evolving complex systems, and effectuation appears to be a preferred decision model with entrepreneurs who have created high-growth firms, we should be able to link Near Decomposibility to the processes these entrepreneurs use to create and grow enduring firms–whether in an experimental situation or in the real world (Saraswathy, 2008, p.163). But instead of trying out a more fundamental complexity science-based explanation of entrepreneurial behavior, Saraswathy used the expertise theory to build the theory of effectuation. 

    Finally, I believe that effectuation if developed as a self-organization logic can be applied in other domains. It has applications in complex domains like education, learning, economics, politics, etc. Framing effectuation as a science of action in social complexity will open up a lot of possibilities. This also will make the theory more robust and useful.

    Read also: Effectual Self-Organization: Could it be a mindful praxis for self-organization

    Part of Esoloop Framework Series

    Citations

    Barabási, Albert-László. The Formula: The science behind why people succeed or fail. Macmillan, 2018

    Baron, Robert A. “Effectual versus predictive logics in entrepreneurial decision making: Differences between experts and novices: Does experience in starting new ventures change the way entrepreneurs think? Perhaps, but for now,“caution” is essential.” Journal of Business Venturing 24, no. 4 (2009): 310-315

    Baron, Robert A., and Rebecca A. Henry. “How entrepreneurs acquire the capacity to excel: Insights from research on expert performance.” Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal 4, no. 1 (2010): 49-65.

    Ericsson, K. Anders, Ralf T. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Römer. “The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance.” Psychological review 100, no. 3 (1993): 363

    Frankish, Julian S., Richard G. Roberts, Alex Coad, Taylor C. Spears, and David J. Storey. “Do entrepreneurs really learn? Or do they just tell us that they do?.” Industrial and Corporate Change22, no. 1 (2013): 73-106.

    Kahneman, Daniel, and Gary Klein. “Conditions for intuitive expertise: a failure to disagree.”American psychologist 64, no. 6 (2009): 515.

    Llewellyn, David J., and Kerry M. Wilson. “The controversial role of personality traits in entrepreneurial psychology.” Education+ Training (2003).

    Macnamara, Brooke N., David Z. Hambrick, and Frederick L. Oswald. “Deliberate practice and performance in music, games, sports, education, and professions: A meta-analysis.” Psychological science 25, no. 8 (2014): 1608-1618.
    McClelland, David C. “N achievement and entrepreneurship: A longitudinal study.” Journal of personality and Social Psychology 1, no. 4 (1965): 389.

    Sarasvathy, Saras D. Effectuation: Elements of entrepreneurial expertise. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009.

    Sarasvathy, Saras D., and Herbert A. Simon. “Effectuation, near-decomposability, and the creation and growth of entrepreneurial firms.” In First Annual Research Policy Technology Entrepreneurship Conference. 2000.

    Shanteau, James. “Competence in experts: The role of task characteristics.” Organizational behavior and human decision processes 53, no. 2 (1992): 252-266.

  • Why expertise theory applied in entrepreneurship is flawed?

    This is an updated version of my previous blog post that explored the flaws of effectuation.

    The series has two more posts which you can read here and here (Effectual Self-Organization: Could it be a mindful praxis for self-organization).

    The empirical evidence for effectuation came from the study of expert entrepreneurs conducted by Saraswathy. She contrasts her study on entrepreneurial expertise with entrepreneurial performance which has been traditionally studied either (1) as a set of personality traits of the entrepreneur that explains the success or failure of the firms he or she creates (Llewellyn and Wilson, 2003), or (2) as a set of circumstances or attributes of the project and its environment that contains the seeds of its success or failure (Thornton, 1999). In that, she conducted a cognitive science-based study of entrepreneurial expertise using think-aloud verbal protocols. Included in that, was a 17-page problem set of 10 typical decisions in a startup firm and had a representative sample of 27 expert entrepreneurs.

    I claim that this expertise framing of effectuation is flawed and counterproductive. I propose a much more scientific way of approaching or using effectuation, i.e. Effectuation as a praxis/logic/heuristics for self-organization in complex domains, not just as possessions of expert entrepreneurs.

    Following are some reasons why I consider the expertise theory of effectuation flawed;

    Firstly, entrepreneurship is a low validity domain (Kahneman and Klein, 2009) with extreme levels of complexity. To have genuine expertise to develop, the domains must be of high validity. i.e. “Skilled intuitions will only develop in an environment of sufficient regularity, which provides valid cues to the situation” (Kahneman and Klein, 2009). This was also previously spotted in a review by Shanteau(1992), in which he confirmed the importance of predictable environments and opportunities to learn them, in order to develop real expertise. To Kahneman and Klein(2009) prolonged practice and feedback that is both rapid and unequivocal are necessary conditions for expertise, provided by predictable environments. To be more specific about the contrast, Immediate Feedback, Repeatability & Regular environment are the fundamental conditions to develop expertise. Entrepreneurship is characterized by the opposite; Delayed feedback, Non-Repeatability, Irregular complex, and an emergent environment.

    Secondly, the effectiveness of deliberate practice as claimed by effectuation will not work in complex domains like entrepreneurship. There is no scientific evidence of it. Saraswathy(2008) defines an expert as someone who has attained a high level of performance in a domain as a result of years of experience and deliberate practice (Ericsson et al, 1993). Against this, Baron (2009) raised the important problem, ie “In what tasks or activities do successful entrepreneurs demonstrate expert performance?”. Advancing that point, Baron and Henry (2010) argued that deliberate practice may not be possible in entrepreneurship and that entrepreneurs instead either learn vicariously or transfer skills learned through practice in other domains into their new ventures. Frankish et al(2013) specifically questioned the idea of learning from experience. They pointed to the lack of repetition opportunities (owing to task diversity) and the difficulty of interpreting the various causes of new venture survival, suggesting that entrepreneurs improve performance only partially based on their experience in running new ventures. Further, in recent scholarly works, it has been demonstrated that deliberate practice may not guarantee better performance in extremely complex domains. A 2014 meta-analysis (Macnamara et al, 2014) has shown that deliberate practice only explained 26% of the variance in performance for games, 21% for music, 18% for sports, 4% for education, and less than 1% for professions. This further demonstrates a low connection between deliberate practice and performance in complex unstructured domains.

    Thirdly, expertise in complex social domains are distributed (Edwards, 2010). It is not necessary that an entrepreneur must be an expert in finance, accounting, programming, law, etc. Such expertise is distributed(and or extended) across various individuals(lawyer, doctor) institutions(law enforcement, companies) and artifacts(tools, software). etc. It is not even necessary that the entrepreneur has to know the entrepreneurial core activities. He or she can still win in case she or he is in the right high network place(e.g. Harvard, Stanford, etc.), get good people to mentor and work with (e.g. Facebook case of Sean Parker, Peter Thiel), get access to specialized institutions(e.g. YC in the case of Dropbox), have a rich family to support, etc. He can also fail despite all of this(see next).

    Fourthly, complex domains like entrepreneurship are subjected to various complexity laws like power laws, Mathew effects, reputation effects, ecosystem-embedded-preferential-attachment, etc. This invalidates success as a metric of expertise. Core events in complex systems like entrepreneurship never repeat in originality(strange attractor effect), feedback is delayed, and since complex systems are governed by power laws, small things(e.g. Harvard dorm Facebook) can result in huge success, and resource-rich interventions can fail(google plus). A tangent is that the emergent property of a system may not be the result of the expertise of a particular agent or agents, but because of the dynamics of the whole system co-evolving with the ecosystem as a whole. This may prevent us from establishing any valid causal relationship between expertise and performance in a domain like entrepreneurship. Thus in complexity, high performance may not guarantee success, in that, the success of an individual does not depend uniquely on the quality of performance (Barabási, 2018). 

    Fifthly, I believe that, like the personality view of entrepreneurial achievement (McClelland,1951, 1961; Llewellyn and Wilson, 2003), the expertise view may also have some unintended counter-productive effects. It can legitimize the hubris among successful entrepreneurs, and at the same time make the aspiring entrepreneurs think that they may require deliberate practice to become a successful entrepreneur, while in-fact success could be the result of complexity-effects like Mathew effects, reputation effects, preferential attachment, etc.

    Sixthly, A very important question to ask here is; Is it even desirable to start multiple ventures than make one single venture successful. Why do people start multiple ventures? Is it because they see it as playing chess or golf? Will they start another venture if they are incredibly successful in the first business? Will a few outlier cases like Elon Musk ethically suffice us to prescribe it as a standard scientific way of thinking about the world? Do multiple successful marriages make someone a marriage expert, or unlucky and bad at marriage?. The key point I am trying to make here is that in domains like chess, multiple success may be a sign of expertise. In many extremely complex questions of life, it may be undesirable.  

    Seventhly, as I have demonstrated, most effectuation principles correspond to the dynamics of self-organizing complex system. This means it must not be limited to entrepreneurs. Herbert Simon also hinted at this aspect and suggested that there might be a connection between effectuation and Near Decomposibility (Sarasvathy and Simon, 2000). According to him (Saraswathy, 2008), Near Decomposibility is an astonishingly ubiquitous principle in the architecture of rapidly evolving complex systems, and effectuation appears to be a preferred decision model with entrepreneurs who have created high-growth firms, we should be able to link Near Decomposibility to the processes these entrepreneurs use to create and grow enduring firms–whether in an experimental situation or in the real world (Saraswathy, 2008, p.163). But instead of trying out a more fundamental complexity science-based explanation of entrepreneurial behavior, Saraswathy used the expertise theory to build the theory of effectuation. 

    Finally, I believe that effectuation if developed as a self-organization logic can be applied in other domains. It has applications in complex domains like education, learning, economics, politics, etc. Framing effectuation as a science of action in social complexity will open up a lot of possibilities. This also will make the theory more robust and useful.

    Read also: Effectual Self-Organization: Could it be a mindful praxis for self-organization

    Part of Esoloop Framework Series

    Citations

    Barabási, Albert-László. The Formula: The science behind why people succeed or fail. Macmillan, 2018

    Baron, Robert A. “Effectual versus predictive logics in entrepreneurial decision making: Differences between experts and novices: Does experience in starting new ventures change the way entrepreneurs think? Perhaps, but for now,“caution” is essential.” Journal of Business Venturing 24, no. 4 (2009): 310-315

    Baron, Robert A., and Rebecca A. Henry. “How entrepreneurs acquire the capacity to excel: Insights from research on expert performance.” Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal 4, no. 1 (2010): 49-65.

    Ericsson, K. Anders, Ralf T. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Römer. “The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance.” Psychological review 100, no. 3 (1993): 363

    Frankish, Julian S., Richard G. Roberts, Alex Coad, Taylor C. Spears, and David J. Storey. “Do entrepreneurs really learn? Or do they just tell us that they do?.” Industrial and Corporate Change22, no. 1 (2013): 73-106.

    Kahneman, Daniel, and Gary Klein. “Conditions for intuitive expertise: a failure to disagree.”American psychologist 64, no. 6 (2009): 515.

    Llewellyn, David J., and Kerry M. Wilson. “The controversial role of personality traits in entrepreneurial psychology.” Education+ Training (2003).

    Macnamara, Brooke N., David Z. Hambrick, and Frederick L. Oswald. “Deliberate practice and performance in music, games, sports, education, and professions: A meta-analysis.” Psychological science 25, no. 8 (2014): 1608-1618.
    McClelland, David C. “N achievement and entrepreneurship: A longitudinal study.” Journal of personality and Social Psychology 1, no. 4 (1965): 389.

    Sarasvathy, Saras D. Effectuation: Elements of entrepreneurial expertise. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009.

    Sarasvathy, Saras D., and Herbert A. Simon. “Effectuation, near-decomposability, and the creation and growth of entrepreneurial firms.” In First Annual Research Policy Technology Entrepreneurship Conference. 2000.

    Shanteau, James. “Competence in experts: The role of task characteristics.” Organizational behavior and human decision processes 53, no. 2 (1992): 252-266.

  • Daniel Kahneman on expertise with reference to entrepreneurship

    I have already posted about Kahneman and Klein(2009) arguing that “Skilled intuitions will only develop in an environment of sufficient regularity, which provides valid cues to the situation”.

    In the following short video, Daniel Kahneman elaborates some of the conditions that are necessary for genuine expertise to develop.

  • Those who teach can’t do.?

    The central argument of this post(list of links) is that the best performers in a field might not be good coaches or mentors. On the other hand, people without stardom performance might become extraordinary mentors or coaches. This is not to generalize or to compartmentalize doer vs teacher/ doing vs teaching, etc., but to reiterate certain possibilities which are often ignored in popular high-performance domains, particularly the one with a higher level of complexity and uncertainty.

    1. People confuse the epistemology of a field(how experts develop new knowledge) with its pedagogy (how best to teach novices.)
    2. This Is The Real Reason The Best Athletes Usually Make The Worst Coaches
    3. The Best Players Rarely Make the Best Coaches
    4. Overthinking skilled motor performance: Or why those who teach can’t do

  • Familial Socialism seems to be a much powerful predictor of genius & talent

    In this short clip Anders Ericson(expert of expertise) exposes myths about Mozzart’s talent.

    This same logic can be applied to dissect the genius of child programmers like Elon Musk .

  • Cognitive Entrenchment, Expertise, & Flexibility

    Cognitive entrenchment refers to “a high level of stability in one’s domain schemas” and arises largely from expertise.

    As expertise is acquired through practice, “the content and relations comprising an expert’s domain schemas are likely to be activated and applied innumerable times”

    Research suggests that as one acquires domain expertise, one loses flexibility with regard to problem solving, adaptation, and creative idea generation.

    According to the author, inflexibility arises most directly not from expertise but, instead, from the high degree of cognitive entrenchment that often pervades experts’ domain schemas.

    This is an excerpt from AOM article “Reconsidering the Trade-off Between Expertise and Flexibility: a Cognitive Entrenchment Perspective” by Erik Dane.

  • My thoughts on Entrepreneurial Expertise: Twitter Thread

    The Feedback Loop Tangent

    https://twitter.com/bartderre/status/1315911064677163010?s=20
    https://twitter.com/johnywrites/status/1316000776875991042?s=20

  • From blog Gsstudy.com to blog Johnywrites.com

    I started blogging inspired by Seth Godin.

    His inspiring words deeply fueled my persistence for last several years and helped me to set my moto as “blog no matter what & fight perfectionism”. His advice on blogging has been at the core of what inspired my continued maintenance of Gsstudy.com for last few years as a blog on learning (Even after I discontinued the IAS exam portal which was hosted in the same domain name, 2015 to 2017.).

    Link: A great playlist about writing which will inspire you too

    Here is the quote that inspired me.

    ” Blogging is free it doesn’t matter even if anyone reads it. What matters is the humility that comes from writing it. What matters is the metacognition of thinking about what you’re going to say. How do you explain yourself to the few employees or your cat or whoever is going to look at it. How do you force yourself to describe in three paragraphs why you did something.
    How do you respond out loud. If you’re good at it, some people are going to read it. If you’re not good at it, and you stick with it, you’ll get good at it”

    Video Here

    Gsstudy helped me to hide myself and be anonymous, and thus helped me to reduce the pressure of perfectionism(premature exposure). I decided to let go of Gsstudy.com now and continue my blog in johnywrites.com because I think I am ready to associate my identity with my blog.

    Looking back, I can identify many positive effects the blogging practice had on me.

    First big advantage was that it helped me understand and clarify my calling. I think Gsstudy aided the process of clarification and co-construction of my unique value proposition.

    Secondly, It made me think and understand about the need for a niche and a community.

    Third one is about the power of Identity, Possession, & Clarity: One thing I have realized was that my possessions and path dependencies actually drove most of my action directions. Gsstudy(my blog) formed part of my possession and path dependency, and it determined the things which I read, websites I surfed and the people I followed on social media for the last several years.

    Fourthly, Because I was writing anonymously without sharing on social media, it helped me to reduce inhibition, fear of making mistakes & other bad things that comes with effort to please someone. (Eg. lack of spontaneity)

    Finally, I thing, years of running Gsstudy, and blogging helped me to reduce the cognitive load caused by extraneous and non core activity( non blog writing) elements.

  • Anders Ericsson passed way (1947 – June 17, 2020): Here is a clip in which he explains his learning strategy

    Anders Ericsson spent much of his career studying what makes the world’s top athletes, chess players, musicians and others the best at what they are doing. His theory of “deliberate practice” led to him being recognized as the world’s foremost expert on expertise.

    His research captured attention of mainstream audience mostly after Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling book “Outliers.

    Here is a short clip in which he talks about his learning strategy while preparing for History Exams

  • Research: Accelerator expertise and Entrepreneurship

    https://twitter.com/kshtriya/status/1222242341291020288

    This study “Accelerator expertise: Understanding the intermediary role of accelerators in the development of the Bangalore entrepreneurial ecosystem” looked at the intermediary role of accelerators in the developing regional entrepreneurial ecosystem of Bangalore.
    Researchers Suresh Bhagavatula, Ketan Goswami and J. Robert Mitchell analyzed data from 54 interviews with accelerator graduates, accelerator managers, and other ecosystem stakeholders and from 49 websites, 13 online video interviews, 26 online news sources, and 301 pages of policy documents.
    They adopted a socially situated entrepreneurial cognition approach to theorize how accelerator expertise,

    • Existing at a meso‐level,
    • Intermediates between (micro‐level) founders and the (macro‐level) ecosystem.

    In this model researchers focused on four different types of accelerator expertise :

    • connection
    • development
    • coordination
    • and selection

    which together increase stakeholders’ commitment to the entrepreneurial ecosystem, leading to venture validation (success or failure) and ecosystem additionality.


    The findings indicate that accelerators contribute to ecosystems in a way that is distinct from, but supportive of, building individual ventures.