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.
Activity-Centred Analysis and Design (ACAD) is a meta-theoretical framework for understanding and improving local, complex, learning situations developed by Peter Goodyear and colleagues
I have recently posted an abstract about the framework. Here is a blogpost link and a short video introduction to the framework
Synergetics is an interdisciplinary theoretical approach that studies self-organization in complex systems(systems that are characterized by openness, dynamics, and complexity). It was developed by physicist Hermann Haken(1969) through his research experiments on laser light. He noticed unpredictable patterns emerging that cannot be explained by linear models. The properties of light change in a self-organized manner when the laser reaches a critical point or “laser threshold”, and such emergent order sets the control parameter which enslaves the system.
(This is an updated post)
For a real explanation, listen directly from the master: Hermann Haken
My initial exposure to synergetics from an entrepreneurship related scholarship started with reading Jeffrey Goldstein’s article(attached) in which he stressed his radical construction point of view that paints a negative picture. He argues;
“Although these connotations of self-organization have provided a corrective to the outdated belief that novel order in a system can only come about through the imposition of external order, a careful inspection of research in complexity theory reveals that the emergence of new order is more appropriately constructed rather than self-organized as such (Goldstein 2003).”
EMERGENCE, CREATIVITY, AND THE LOGIC OF FOLLOWING AND NEGATING by Goldstein’ 2015
Goldstein further specifically pointed to Haken; in that he adds;
“An example is that much touted emblem of self-organization, the laser with its property of ultra-focused coherence (see Haken, 1981). In actuality, though, laser light hardly comes about either spontaneously or through inner direction. On the contrary, it requires the most stringent of laboratory manipulations and constraints (see a list of these in Strogatz, 2003). An examination of other examples of self-organization reveals a similar constructional nature of emergent phenomena (see, e.g., Nicolis, 1989)”
EMERGENCE, CREATIVITY, AND THE LOGIC OF FOLLOWING AND NEGATING by Goldstein’ 2015
In entrepreneurship, a pioneering effort to apply Synergetics is coming from Prof Andreas Liening and colleagues of TU Dortmund. The top reads are;
Although I am extremely interested in reading anything relating to entrepreneurship and complexity, I totally disagree with the “Entrepreneurship Mindset” as the purpose of Entrepreneurship Education promoted by Liening. To see my reasons check this, this, this, this, this and this
It is very easy to fall into the trap of traditional representational cognitive psychology and its lazy dependence on decontextualized hard or impossible to define concepts like Mindset.
Some potential issues with application of self-organization and synergetics in education
It is confusing when you as an outsider looks at education and learning science for the first time to find application ideas. It is very easy to be trapped in a cultish eco-chamber. Even though I agree that It is essential to read people whom we disagree with, a serious issue arises when we start to blindly believe everything they say. This is especially true if one doesn’t have the necessary expertise and diversity in their system to figure out the flaws of the argument.
Example; Paul A. Kirschner who is one of the most reductionist of all the education scholars with his famous works like, “Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work” is also famous for his work on learning in complexity, ” Ten steps to complex learning”. A new observer might be mistaken to believe that Kirschner is the go to authority in complexity in education. This is a huge mistake. This points to serious issues with the application of synergetics in particular and complexity science in general without any understanding of domain epistemology.
All the above can be viewed as going against the ethics of complexity, especially when proposed as solutions for other people and other people’s children.
According to Synergetics Philosophers Helena Knyazeva and Sergey Kurdyumov, “The synergetic assertions can apply to many scientific disciplines. They are functioning on the level from which a great scope of scientific disciplines can be embraced. However, such an approach has also a negative side. The higher the level of the view is the less concrete details can be distinguished. On the other hand, the deeper we penetrate particular details the less place seems to remain for synergetics itself” They adds; “Synergetics can provide us only with general frames of consideration, a mental scheme or a heuristic approach to a concrete scientific investigation. Concrete applications of synergetic models to complex human or social systems presuppose further detailed scientific investigations. Such investigations can be carried out only by the use of a profound knowledge of a certain disciplinary field and/or with a close collaboration with specialists in a corresponding scientific discipline. Thus, synergetics gives a certain approach or a direction of research, or, to put it in terms of psychology, a scientific attitude. The rest is the matter of every concrete investigation”
Synergetics: New Universalism or Natural Philosophy of the Age of Post-Nonclassical Science?
ARBITRARINESS IN NATURE: SYNERGETICS AND EVOLUTIONARY LAWS OF PROHIBITION(Co-authored with Haken)
SYNERGETICS OF HUMAN CREATIVITY; HELENA and HAKEN
The Synergetic Principles of Nonlinear Thinking
Synergetics and the Images of Future
Nonlinear synthesis and co‐evolution of complex systems
NONLINEARITY OF TIME IN THE COMPLEX WORLD
The Synergetic World View and Its Synthetic Value
FIGURES OF TIME IN EVOLUTION OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS
Recent works
Virtual Reality from the Standpoint of Complexity Science
Paradigm Shift in the Understanding of the Creative Abilities of Consciousness
Strategies of Dynamic Complexity Management
Active Innovative Media as Co-Evolutionary Landscapes
Cognitive Networks: Interactivity, Intersubjectivity, and Synergy
Complexity Studies: Interdisciplinarity in Act
The Idea of Co-evolution; Towards a New Evolutionary Holism
In the last few posts, I have been developing the idea of effectuation as a self-organization principle against the idea of expertise acquired by entrepreneurs via experience and deliberate practice. Following are two blog posts in which I have elaborated my thoughts.
I have demonstrated that the ideas proposed by effectuation fit perfectly with self-organization principles. Advancing that point, the following are some of the complexity principles associated with effectuation and its core principles(heuristics).
1. Self-Organization/Effectual dynamics
I argue that “effectual dynamics” is the dynamics of self-organization. Self-Organization refers to the feature of systems that appear to organize themselves without external direction or control. Self-organization has been used to describe swarms, flocks, traffic, and many other systems where the local interactions lead to a global pattern or behavior (Camazine et al, 2003; Gershenson, 2007). Intuitively, self-organization implies that a system increases its own organization. Self-organization of the effectual entrepreneur is initiated with an examination of the means available to an entrepreneur. The questions “Who am I?”, “What do I know?”, and “Whom do I know?” allow for an examination of the means available to an entrepreneur, which allows him or her to consider what he or she can do (Sarasvathy & Dew, 2005). Through interacting with others and engaging with stakeholders, the entrepreneur discovers new means and establishes new goals that allow for revaluation of means and possible courses of action (Fisher, 2012).
2. The attractor/ Intention
Self-organizing systems typically evolve towards a state of equilibrium, or an attractor state. Almost any dynamical system can be seen as self-organizing; if it has an attractor towards which the system dynamics will tend to move, thus increasing by itself its own organization. According to Kauffman(1995), “the trajectory converges onto a state-cycle attractor around which the system will cycle persistently thereafter. A variety of different trajectories may all converge on the same state cycle, like water draining into a lake. The state-cycle attractor is the lake, and the trajectories converging onto it constitute its basin of attraction”. So the question is, Who or what constitutes one of the key initial attractor according to effectuation. Is it the entrepreneur, or intention? Since effectuation has a lot of roots in the work of Herbert Simon, especially “The Sciences of the Artificial” (Simon, 1968), I prefer to take evidence from his work, quoted by Saraswathy herself; “For Simon, human intention and design were central to the social sciences, and the word ‘man-made’ was synonymous with artificial” (Sarasvathy, 2008). From that foundation, it is logical to assume recognition of “intention as the attractor (Juarrero, 2010)”. Intention is also a valid concept in entrepreneurship (Bird, 1989; Shapero and Sokol, 1982; Krueger and Carsrud, 1993). According to Juarrero(2004), “new intention reorganize the earlier state space into a more differentiated and complex set of qualitatively novel options. This means that once an agent formulates a prior intention, every possible behavioral alternative no longer requires consideration; only a partitioned subset does”.
3. Phase space disposition
According to Saraswathy, the process elements of effectuation begin with entrepreneurs asking who they are, what they know, and whom they know. This corresponds to the idea of knowing the disposition of phase space or state space of a complex adaptive system. In complexity science, the ‘phase space'(or state space) is the representation of all possible instantaneous states that can occur in a physical system (Butkovskiy 1990, Sayama 2015). It can be thought of as the space within, around, or adjacent to which a complex adaptive system can self-organize and emerge. While we may not be able to know precisely how a system might change, we do know that it will be most likely within the phase space. A change in emergent phenomena within a phase space may be incremental. A radical change suggests a shift in phase space, a qualitative difference in the system (Byrne & Callaghan, 2014). According to Dave Snowden(2017a), in complex adaptive systems, “at a system level, we have no linear material cause but instead we have a dispositional state, a set of possibilities and plausibilities in which a future state cannot be predicted.” This is particularly important because, in a complex system, phase space disposition, is what decides on the evolutionary potential of the system, not any specific fixed goal. If a system is complex(no causality), “you can’t set outcome targets a priori, but you can define a vector target (direction and speed of change from the present against intensity of effort). You can’t manage to a desired future state but have to manage the evolutionary potential of the situated present. You can’t predict the future, but you can increase resilience in there the here and now which will allow you to manage that uncertainty” (Snowden, 2017b).
This importance of disposition can also be found in the works of scholars who specialize in entrepreneurship complexity. According to Jeffrey Goldstein, Self-transcending Constructions (Goldstein, 2003), which involves the emergence of radically novel outcomes—-operate on already extant order and creatively transform it along the way into radically novel outcomes.
Following are some sources of this pre-existing order that are processed by Self-transcending Constructions (Goldstein, 2005);
1. The already present nascent order in a system, i.e., the way it is functioning right now;
2. The multifarious constraints currently in place, e.g., the geographical layout, the actual buildings, the already extant work groups, the constraints of money, time, goals, and so forth;
3. Operations of recombining and manipulating the above;
4. Supplemental means for introducing novelty such as randomization and negation, i.e., changing the rule.
I argue that an effectual entrepreneur, by asking questions such as; who they are? what do they know? and whom they know? etc. effectively is trying to make sense of the dispositional propensities, so that they can utilize the evolutionary potential of the present to decide what to do.
4. Adjacent Possible.
From the understanding of disposition comes the “The bird-in-hand principle” which refers to a principle of means-driven(as opposed to goal-driven) action. The emphasis here is on creating something new with existing means rather than discovering new ways to achieve given goals. To effectuation, entrepreneurs focus on what they can do and do it, without worrying much about what they ought to do. This idea is similar to acting in the adjacent possible (Kauffman, 1996), i.e. a kind of zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978), towards which change and evolution are more likely because of the current disposition of the system. The concept of “adjacent possible” was introduced by Stuart Kauffman (1996; 2000) in evolutionary biology and complex adaptive systems to explain how biological evolution can be seen as exploration and actualization of what is adjacent possible. It can be defined as “the set of possibilities available to individuals, communities, institutions, organisms, productive processes, etc., at a given point in time during their evolution” (Loreto 2015, p. 9). The concept of the “adjacent possible” is useful for understanding how entrepreneurial adjacent possibilities emerge, and how the new adjacent possible will lead to yet newer adjacent possibilities. In the case of effectual entrepreneurs, they will focus on the adjacent possible than worry about things they don’t possess. They will focus on what they can do and do it.
Any failure inside the zone of adjacent possible will not likely result in system destruction, but likely help the development of system resilience. The affordable-loss principle to me is a heuristics based on this idea. It prescribes committing in advance to what one is willing to lose rather than investing in calculations about expected returns to the project. If an effectual entrepreneur commits 6 months and 10000k, that commitment itself will shape the constraints of the adjacent possible.
4. Co-evolution and Co-adaptation
For a system to self-organize, its elements need to communicate: they need to “understand” what other elements, or mediators, “want” to tell them (Gershenson,2007). Thus, first of all, in a complex system, dynamics of self-organization are initiated and manifested by heterogeneous agents interacting with one another in a non-linear and continuous way. Even if specific agents may only interact with a few others, the impact of these interactions are propagated throughout the system. Accordingly, agents co-evolve with one another (Anderson, 1999). Through this interaction, agents strive to improve their fitness with the environment but the outcome of these attempts depends on the disposition and behaviors of other agents (Mitleton-Kelly, 2003). Thus, co-evolution is one of the key themes when it comes to viewing the system as a whole(the nested and entangled relationships with multiple complex adaptive systems), which refers to the simultaneous evolution of entities and their environments, whether these entities are organisms or organizations (Baum & Singh, 1994). It encompasses the twin notions of inter-dependency and mutual adaptation, with the idea that species or organizations evolve in relation to their environments, while at the same time these environments evolve in relation to them. In effectuation, this is parallel to initiated interaction and the crazy-quilt principle. This principle involves interacting and “negotiating with any and all stakeholders who are willing to make actual commitments to the project, without worrying about opportunity costs, or carrying out elaborate competitive analyses. Furthermore, who comes on board determines the goals of the enterprise. Not vice versa”. This involves the co-evolutionary potential of interacting agents constituted by the principles we have discussed till now but applied to the other side. They are; The Intention(attractor) of other agents, Phase space disposition of interacting agents, Adjacent-possible of interacting agents.
5, Acknowledging and appropriating Emergent property
Complex adaptive systems show emergent properties. Emergent properties refer to a characteristic that is found across the system but which individual parts of the system do not themselves hold. E.g. Human heart is made of heart cells. But heart cells on their own don’t have the property of pumping blood. You will need the whole heart to be able to pump blood. Thus, the pumping property of the heart is emergent. A complex system like entrepreneurship has emergent property. That means the emergent or emerging venture idea might be different from the ideas the entrepreneur has initially conceived. Thus initial idea may be to start HTML5 supported location-based service; The emergent outcome could be Instagram. The initial idea may be to develop an app to compare two people’s pictures and rate which one was more attractive; The emergent outcome could be Facebook. The lemonade principle of effectuation is based on adapting, using, and improvising according to emergent realities, whether it is perceived as negative or positive. It suggests acknowledging and appropriating contingency by leveraging surprises rather than trying to avoid them, overcome them, or adapt to them. This means accepting the emergent realities as it comes, adapting, acknowledging, and appropriating the contingencies as it unfolds.
The pilot-in-the-plane principle urges relying on and working with the human agency as the prime driver of opportunity rather than limiting entrepreneurial efforts to exploiting exogenous factors such as technological trajectories and socioeconomic trends. This is equivalent to elements of Lichtenstein’s(2016) concept of generative emergence that views entrepreneurial emergence as intentional, and agency, even if distributed, as the source of successful organizing. To the framework, intention is the primary attractor around which self-organisation takes place. In order for effective self-organization to take place, the agent must use agency, not to exert control that is driven by his/her own bounded rationality, or the rules of perceived local optima, but a kind of agency that is distributed (Garud and Karnøe, 2005)and embedded as well (Garud and Karnøe, 2003)
6. Effectual Self-organisation cycle
A complex system is always dispositional and I have discussed quoting Snowden that we can only know the system by knowing how it is disposed. “you can’t set outcome targets a priori, but you can define a vector target (direction and speed of change from the present against intensity of effort). You can’t manage to a desired future state but have to manage the evolutionary potential of the situated present”. Since the system is always changing, the bird in hand or disposition is also parallelly evolving. This warrants continuous reappraisal of the situated present. The effectual cycle suggests always looping back and cycling through five core principles in a non-linear manner(bird-in-hand, affordable-loss, crazy-quilt, lemonade, pilot-in-the-plane). More specifically there are two types of converging cycles mentioned; expanding means and converging goals. The expanding-means cycle looks for increases in resources, and the Converging goals cycle adapts the goals. “It accretes constraints on the venture that converge into specific goals that get embodied in an effectual artifact over time” (Sarasvathy et al, 2014; Sarasvathy & Dew, 2005, pp. 543–544). This is also a feedback about emergent realities that will lead to estimation of the new phase space disposition, new adjacent possible, new co-evolutionary potential, new action, etc.
This is part of Esoloop Framework
Citations
Camazine, Scott, Jean-Louis Deneubourg, Nigel R. Franks, James Sneyd, Guy Theraula, and Eric Bonabeau. Self-organization in biological systems. Princeton university press, 2020.
Gershenson, Carlos. Design and control of self-organizing systems. CopIt Arxives, 2007.
Fisher, Greg. “Effectuation, causation, and bricolage: A behavioral comparison of
emerging theories in entrepreneurship research.” Entrepreneurship theory and practice
36, no. 5 (2012): 1019-1051.
Simon, Herbert A. The sciences of the artificial. MIT press, 1996.
Juarrero, Alicia. “Intentions as complex dynamical attractors.” Causing human actions:
New perspectives on the causal theory of action (2010): 253-276.
Bird, Barbara, and Mariann Jelinek. “The operation of entrepreneurial intentions.”
Entrepreneurship theory and practice 13, no. 2 (1989): 21-30.
Krueger, Norris F., and Alan L. Carsrud. “Entrepreneurial intentions: Applying the theory
of planned behaviour.” Entrepreneurship & Regional Development 5, no. 4 (1993):
315-330.
Juarrero, Alicia. “The self-organization of intentional action.” Revue internationale de
philosophie 2 (2004): 189-204.
Butkovskiy, AG 1990, Phase Portraits of Control Dynamical Systems, Springer
Netherlands
Sayama, Hiroki. Introduction to the modeling and analysis of complex systems. Open
SUNY Textbooks, 2015.
Byrne, David, and Gillian Callaghan. Complexity theory and the social sciences: The
state of the art. Routledge, 2013.
Snowden, David. Inclinations-dispositions (https://thecynefin.co/inclinations-dispositions/), Snowden. 2017(a)
Snowden, David. Systems thinking & complexity (https://thecynefin.co/systems-thinking-complexity/), Snowden. 2017(b)
Goldstein, Jeffrey. “Emergence, creativity, and the logic of following and negating.” The Innovation Journal: The Public Sector Innovation Journal 10, no. 3 (2005): 1-10.
Goldstein, Jeffrey. “The construction of emergent order, or, how to resist the temptation of hylozoism.” Nonlinear dynamics, psychology, and life sciences 7, no. 4 (2003): 295-314.
Kauffman, Stuart A. “Investigations: The nature of autonomous agents and the worlds
they mutually create.” Santa Fe Institute, 1996.
Loreto, Vittorio. “Unfolding the dynamics of creativity, novelties and innovation.” White
paper of the Kreyon project (2015).
Gershenson, Carlos. Design and control of self-organizing systems. CopIt Arxives, 2007.
Anderson, Philip. “Perspective: Complexity theory and organization science.”
Organization science 10, no. 3 (1999): 216-232.
Mitleton-Kelly, Eve. “Ten principles of complexity and enabling infrastructures.” Complex
systems and evolutionary perspectives on organisations: The application of complexity
theory to organisations 1 (2003): 23-50.
Baum, Joel AC, and Jitendra V. Singh, eds. Evolutionary dynamics of organizations.
Oxford University Press, 1994.
Lichtenstein, Benyamin. “Emergence and emergents in entrepreneurship: Complexity
science insights into new venture creation.” Entrepreneurship Research Journal 6, no. 1
(2016): 43-52.
Garud, Raghu, and Peter Karnøe. “Distributed agency and interactive emergence.”
Innovating strategy process (2005): 88-96.
Garud, Raghu, and Peter Karnøe. “Bricolage versus breakthrough: distributed and
embedded agency in technology entrepreneurship.” Research policy 32, no. 2 (2003):
277-300.
Sarasvathy, Saras, K. Kumar, Jeffrey G. York, and Suresh Bhagavatula. “An effectual
approach to international entrepreneurship: Overlaps, challenges, and provocative
possibilities.” Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice 38, no. 1 (2014): 71-93.
Sarasvathy, Saras D., and Nicholas Dew. “New market creation through transformation.”
Journal of evolutionary economics 15, no. 5 (2005): 533-565
I think, approaching effectuation as a self-organization theory/logic for complex domains is more appropriate than viewing it as the possession of a so-called expert entrepreneur. ( I have tweeted about this topic earlier)
Following are some reasons;
Firstly, Most of the effectuation principles are universal and have corresponding concepts from complexity science(Click Link). This means it should 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, 2009), 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, 2009, p.163). The beauty of effectuation is that Saraswathy in her scientific study brilliantly identified and encapsulated all of these complexity principles and made them accessible to potential entrepreneurs with simple everyday language. Thus, I believe, using it as a complexity-based concept may improve the potential and scalability of the concept.
Secondly, many scholars may argue that entrepreneurship is a low validity domain (Kahneman and Klein, 2009). 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. I argue that, while studying the expertise of experienced entrepreneurs, she inadvertently discovered the universal laws for operating in low validity, complex uncertain domain.
Thirdly, complex domains like entrepreneurship are subjected to various complexity laws like power laws, Mathew effects, reputation effects, ecosystem-embedded-preferential-attachment, etc. 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).
Fourthly, deliberate practice may not work in complex domains like entrepreneurship. Saraswathy(2008) defines an expert is as someone who has attained a high level of performance in the domain as a result of years of experience and deliberate practice (Ericsson et al, 1993). But in recent scholarly works, it has been observed 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.
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 entrepreneur think that he may require deliberate practice to become a successful entrepreneur, while in-fact success could be the result of complexity-effects like power laws, Mathew effects, reputation effects, preferential attachment, etc. In fact, complexity can make Big-head(meme silicon-valley Tv show) the king.
Finally, I believe that effectuation is widely applicable in other domains. It has application 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, building upon theories and methods from the natural sciences and complex systems.
This is part of my ESOLoop Framework For Entrepreneurship self-organization
Citations
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.
Sarasvathy, Saras D. Effectuation: Elements of entrepreneurial expertise. Edward Elgar
Publishing, 2009.
Kahneman, Daniel, and Gary Klein. “Conditions for intuitive expertise: a failure to disagree.”
American psychologist 64, no. 6 (2009): 515.
Shanteau, James. “Competence in experts: The role of task characteristics.” Organizational
behavior and human decision processes 53, no. 2 (1992): 252-266.
Barabási, Albert-László. The Formula: The science behind why people succeed or fail. Macmillan,
2018
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
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.
Llewellyn, David J., and Kerry M. Wilson. “The controversial role of personality traits in
entrepreneurial psychology.” Education+ Training (2003).
In complexity and evolution, heterogeneity is an asset. The more the relevant elements of variation present(requisite variety ) in a system, the more resilient and evolvable a system will become.
Despite that, most entrepreneurship models are proposed as solutions for the problems of the existing one. It is often pitched as better that the previous one, Eg. Plan Vs Lean startup, effectuation Vs causation, Theory based view vs Lean.
Using the antecedent as a frame to marginally improve the existing approach is also the standard practice.
While this is the reality, studies have shown that real entrepreneurs don’t behave according to the dictums of any prescriptive models. Fisher (2012) for example investigated behavior underlying the venture founding process using effectuation, bricolage, and causation has found that entrepreneurs often use elements of all the 3 theoretical models, and that there were no cases in which only the behaviors associated with causation were responsible for the development of the venture.
Mansoori and Lackéus(2019) in their analysis stressed the possibility of using multiple methods complimenting each other, which is a standard practice in weather prediction(ensemble models).
Sarasvathy’s(2001) also asserted the point that both causation and effectuation are integral parts of human reasoning that can occur simultaneously, overlapping and intertwining over different contexts of decisions and actions” (p. 245).
I contend that real world decision in a complex adaptive system cannot be understood with linear thinking or binaries. Since it is impossible to know various emergent decision contexts before hand, it is always ideal to design solutions for such variables and contingencies. That means not excluding ideas, models and theories, etc., by prescription or omission.
This is an amazing list of videos that covers a lot of foundational thinkers and their ideas about complexity.
Speakers include; Peter Allen – Embracing Complexity David Byrne – Complexity and the Social Sciences Chris Mowles in the legacy of Ralph Stacey – Complex Responsive Processes Rika Preiser talking about the legacy of Paul Cilliers – Complexity and Postmodernism
Embracing Complexity, Connectivity, and Change
“Engaging with Complexity”
Entrepreneurial behavior is often depicted as results of calculated rational action and seen to arise from a reasoned, judgement of a strategic high IQ genius . An alternative model i.e., an unreasoned, impulse-driven pathway remains to be empirically explored. A recent paper “Impulsivity and entrepreneurial behaviour: Exploring an unreasoned pathway” by Michael L Pietersen and Melodi Botha explores the impulsivity dimension of entrepreneurial behavior.
Key Points
An interesting concept “Classroom gaze” was introduced in the new paper by Tim Fawns.et.al “Seamful learning and professional education”
According to the paper Classroom gaze happens when “students see what they have learned to prioritise in the academic context, shaped, in part, by the ways they are taught and assessed.“