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Why Do Entrepreneurs Innovate Better Than Managers?
netbuzz writes "New research from MIT suggests that entrepreneurs innovate better than managers not because they try more often but rather because when they do try they apply more of their available brainpower to the task. 'We found, somewhat surprisingly, that managers and entrepreneurs did not differ in the probability with which they would undertake explorative (potentially innovative) courses of action. But when entrepreneurs did select explorative tasks, they used both the left and right sides of the frontal cortex of their brain whereas managers only used their left parts of the frontal cortex,' says the lead researcher, MIT Sloan School of Management Visiting Prof. Maurizio Zollo. This is an important difference, he notes, 'because the right side of the frontal cortex is associated with creative thinking, involving to a larger extent emotional processes, whereas the left side is associated with rational decision-making and logic.'"
My father was an executive in a Fortune 5 corporation.
His most telling advice about managing was that the easiest answer for a manager was "no." His explanation was that as a manager charged with running a 4+billion (1960's) dollar operation, his first responsibility was to NOTlose the company's money; therefore risk avoidance was paramount. His advice for me when I was working in a company developing new processes to manage quality, was to explain to the managers how the process (or products, no difference) would LOWER the risks and enhance the manageability of the process. Thus, I would be communicating to the concerns of the managers.
Entrepreneurs on the other hand, he explained, are willing to take the risks to develop a new way to do something (or better, something to create an entirely new market or niche.) Thus, they judge the reward/risk ratio, rather than the other way around, and need to be communicated to in the engineer/developer style they need to be assured that theirs is the right path.
In time, each specialty needs the other. As the project becomes a product, and accrues the necessary infrastructure for support (not only technical) the entrepreneur needs to have managers used to ferreting out those risky aspects of running a mature business; capable of assuring the owners (not just the stockholders, but the process owners also) that their investment isn't in vain.