Venture Initiation and Entrepreneurship

That’s the theme of an article in the January issue of Management Science.  Here’s a summary:

R&D managers interested in increasing the creative output of their departments should be aware that successful inventors could become less creative over time, warn the authors.

In their study, they find that inventors who have experienced success in their efforts to patent their inventions continue to generate new patents but, over time these patents tend to be less divergent from their previous work. This finding implies that allocating more resources to the most prolific inventors may increase the productivity of their department, but it may diminish the extent to which their creative output reflects the exploration of new areas of research.

The negative effects of success on creativity can be managed, say Professors Audia and Goncalo, by encouraging inventors to collaborate with one another and by making “exploration” an explicit and desirable organizational goal.

For an example of a real-life application of this insight, check out this post on the comic industry from Newsarama.com:

Certainly, there’s been plenty of examples, particularly in comics, of creators whose work and success shines ever so brightly for a relatively short amount of time and flames out just as quickly. There’s a reason for that, based on a study featured in the journal Management Science about inventors working in the computer hard drive industry, whose brains are hardwired on innovation and creativity.

OK, I know all this sounds a bit esoteric, but stay with me for a moment…

Turns out, success is the culprit among inventors who have experienced it in their efforts to patent inventions. Yes, they’ll continue to generate new patents but, often, they’ll tend to be less divergent from their previous work, meaning you’ll probably see variations of the same ol’ hard drive, or comic book…

One way to get around that creative “obstacle,” according to researchers: “Encouraging inventors to collaborate with one another.” With comics as collaborative a medium as they come, there’s little doubt, for example, a Alan Moore story mixed with, let’s say, the artistry of an Eddie Campbell has the raw potential to become a classic, just as From Hell has become. In other words, the work of two equals can often be far more powerful than the one…

Bet you can think of at least one former fav creator whose career would flourish once again had they the withwhithal or sense to share the marquee with somebody else…

Now, some of you may say that comics have nothing to do with entrepreneurship, but you’d be wrong–many if not most comic writers & artists nowadays are freelancers running their own small businesses microenterprise!

The following is an excerpt from an interview with founders of EEE, a business aimed at helping college students develop an entrepreneurial mindset: