The Mouse Trap

Friday, September 18, 2009

Entrepreneurial rollercoaster- am happy, have vision; am sad, will focus on task

Cross-posted from my Psychology blog, The Mouse Trap, as this has relevance to entrepreneurs and web-squared audience may benefit from the tips here.

There is a recent article by foo et al, that shows , using Experience Sampling method, that entrepreneurs, when in a negative mood (not necessarily sad, but including anger, irritability etc...sorry for misleading headline:-) are more likely to be focusing on the task at hand; while those same entrepreneurs , when they were in a happy or positive mood would be more likely to be spending efforts on tasks that are more future directed. They interpret their finding in terms of the affect-as-information theory, whereby a positive affect signals that everything is hunky-dory in the present and one can take chances and focus on the future instead; while a negative affect is an indication that things are not going well and one needs to focus on the tasks at hand.  To quote:

Our findings suggest that affect serves as a source of information for entrepreneurs. As argued in the affect-as-information theory, negative affect signals that things are not going well in the venture and may lead entrepreneurs to expend more effort on venture tasks requiring immediate attention. An unexpected finding was that negative affect also increased venture efforts beyond what is immediately required. Because negative affect signals that something is wrong in the venture situation, it could lead entrepreneurs to engage in precautionary behaviors to prevent future damage to the venture.

Positive affect signals that things are going well in the venture, and, using affect-as-information theory, one might expect the entrepreneur to reduce effort because all is well at the moment. In the present study of entrepreneurs, we argued that positive affect should increase venture efforts. It is precisely because positive affect signals that things are going well at the moment that the entrepreneur’s focus can shift to the future, and such focus motivates the entrepreneur to work harder because it promotes behaviors to achieve desired future outcomes (Karniol & Ross 1996). This argument was supported, because our findings showed that future temporal focus mediated the link between positive affect and venture efforts beyond what is immediately required (next-day lagged outcome). Although not hypothesized, positive affect was also found to increase effort on tasks immediately required, and a future temporal focus also mediated the link between positive affect and venture tasks immediately required (with a next-day lag). Striving toward desired future states involves bridging the present and the future (Karniol & Ross, 1996). When entrepreneurs focus on the future, they may not neglect the present, as knowledge of the present may be required to determine how one can reach the desired outcome. To become successful in their venture pursuits, entrepreneurs should be able to integrate the present and future time horizons (Bird & West, 1997). They must be able to make sense of the here and now and the what will be and establish a coherent link between them.

I , would , of course , not restrict myself to what the authors conclude but , as is my ilk, would like to extend the findings and relate to other stuff. For example, I have written earlier about the Promotion and Prevention focus and how promotion focus is related to happiness/mania; while preventive focus may be more related to sadness/depression. Although, not mutually exclusive, a new hypothesis could be that the affect was due to promotion and preventive focus, which itself was due to either the environment was risky or risk-free. The same risky or risk-free environment which led to the negative or positive mood also lead to focusing on the here-and-now or on the future. I'm also tempted to correlate this with some other articles I came across recently-namely one that found that future orientation leads to creativity, while if there is not enough psychological distance we tend to be not -so creative; Could it also be that that is why entrepreneurs long-term strategies and visions are creative; while their short term tactics and day to day handling of affairs is mundane; while we are on the subject of creativity and vagueness (either in distance or space or time or abstractness) another study found that being primed about or thinking about Love leads to creativity while being primed with Lust leads to better analytical ability; is analytical ability much different from focusing on here-and-now; while creativity more future oriented? All these have important implications on how you can use your affect to either focus on hand in an analytical manner or solve problems in future creatively and with vision. As a last afterthought, is that why Manics, who are extremely happy, have such grand visions of future and are so future directed and entrepreneurial in spirit?

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Sunday, September 13, 2009

SilliconIndia startup city: mumbai edition

Most corporate philosophyImage by hartboy via Flickr
Yesterday I attended another event, silliconindia startup city  similar to proto.in and this is an effort to summarize my experiences. (you can read about my proto.in experience here

The first keynote address (as keynote addresses go), was not really interesting or relevant to the startup space. Presented in a lackluster way about the tautology of universal internet, it set the expectations for what had to come.

The panel discussion that followed was a stark contrast. The discussion topic was building a successful starup, but the speakers all never interacted with each other or the audiences and instead narrated the story of their own journey. Not that I am complaining. While Dheeraj of Altruist had interesting anecdotes to share as to how he failed at launching altruist successfully 2 times earlier and what his learning were, the stage was bursting with pure energy as Bhuvin of DirectI took center stage and narrated the DirectI philosophy of how they viewed business as a  game that needs to be played keeping in mind some of the following principles: there are no managers, just coaches; hire a best man for a particular position, average hires do not aggregate and can replace the star performer; how its important to keep score, keep line of sight of achievements and how to celebrate success. slightly off-topic, but perhaps the best talk of the vent. The other two panelists weer also interesting - one  scratching his head repeatedly and claiming that passion and faith is all you require.

This was followed by a panel on opportunities in internet space. Following the precedent of the earlier panel, this panel too did not discuss or interact with each other or the audiences, but shared their views in a sequential order. First off, was the CEO of Mouthshut.com and his wa a really inetretsing and heartfelt talk- he couldnt help taking jibes at athe gold sponsor Rediif.com whose CEO had refused /question an audience with him, at the early stage of his start up. In retaliation, he had decided that if he ever became successful he would definitely mentor others and reply to those who call for advice. another low moment he said one must be prepared for is reporters throwing away your business card (I am exaggerating a bit here) and shrinking from you as if you have swine flu, when you mention that you are launching a dot com in the dot com burst period...which happened to him and was his lowest point of disappointment and despair. He also mentioned Salar from google as the hero of his company and himself,, as despite being a biology major, and fresh out of college he came up with the concept of adsense and adwords the business that sustains google. I mist say that I was impressed with him and perhaps he has become my hero:-)

The other panelists included the CEO of sulekha who decided to play  the devils advocate and focused instead of the dangers and risks in the Internet space rather than the opportunities.   The other panelists were howvere quite keen on the internet opportunity, especially in India.

This was followed by another keynote by much touted Suresh of Minlogicx relating his journey and though they were filled with interesting anecdotes (either as to his abdul kalam connections or narayan murthy idolism or how every Vice Chancellor this of himself as the evangelist and visionary) the take home was not much except that he was a very successful, and wealthy,  consultant prior to his entrepreneurship.   but ya, he had a very engaging style and I was reminded of the person who had taken over the last blogcamp in Pune and had everyone in fits with his anecdotes. Thankfully the talk was at least somehwt relevant to the topic on hand in this case.

The best of the event was over and from now on the experience was downhill. the ceo conclave session was as boring as it could get. I left early for lunch/ visited the booths in the interim and skipped a major part of the ceo conclave(  not that I missed much as friends told me later) .

Post lunch session was devoted to showcasing the start ups.The first 'startup' to present was a self proclaimed one man show, 100hrs before born start up ideainventory- which was basically patenting 40 of ones ideas and then either selling patents or developing solutions based on the patents. Good idea---who sways idea are worthless by themselves .Lets see how he executes this idea.First off he should have at least presented a ppt deck and not relied on an unreadable word doc to present his idea.
Next on were many different presentations- some repeating the same mistake of using too small fonts/ images...others making the mistake of reading verbatim from their decks..albeit agonizingly slowly.  PlugHR presentation stood out from the crowd and I liked the innovativenss and creativity they displayed at their booth,  brochures etc.  Other presentations were more a leraning as to how not to present. One guy even acted funny and cointinued his presentations despite many reminedrs that his time was over:-)

The startups themselves were good...crederity with verifcation services, yoknowldge and yopedia , virtual rack all interesting concepts, but if it wasn't for the panel discussions, perhaps the experience would have been forgettable.

Overall, the panel discussions in sillicon india startup city were pretty good, especially some of the speakers. I look forward to more events of this kind.
 
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Monday, September 7, 2009

Sillicon India startup city- In Mumbai this weekend

I am attending the silliconindia startup city event and here is a blurb from the organizers. See you there!

Just wanted to let you know about an exciting event siliconindia is organizing on September 12 (Saturday in Mumbai). It's by far the largest and most exciting event of its kind in Mumbai.

It is your chance to know the building of companies like Rediff.com, Syntel, Netmagic, Sulekha, Microworld and many more as their founders come and share their journey with us: 
Venki Nishtala, Founder & CEO, Rediff.com 
Keshav R. Murugesh, CEO, Syntel 
Sharad Sanghi, Founder & CEO, Netmagic
Govind Rammurthy, Founder, CEO & MD, MicroWorld Technologies
Satya Prabhakar, Founder & CEO, Sulekha.com

There will be 30 most promising technology startups showcasing their products. You can meet these entrepreneurs and also over 30 investors.
To attend this event, register FREE at http://www.siliconindia.com/startupcity_mumbai/index.php
Watch live product demonstrations 
Get a peek into cutting edge technologies 
Lay hands on the best-of-breed solutions 
Meet young, energetic, passionate geeks 
Experience the culture of innovation in small companies

Visionary Keynotes 
In-depth Panel Discussions

TIME: 8.45 AM to 5 PM 
WHEN: Saturday, September 12, 2009 
WHERE: Hotel RanSgarda, Bandra, Mumbai




Seems to be a promising event!