The Power of Single-Mindedness

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Via Tyler Cowen, Inc. magazine has a piece in its current issue about how entrepreneurs think. It’s based on research from Saras Sarasvathy, a professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, and here’s one bit:

That is not to say entrepreneurs don’t have goals, only that those goals are broad and—like luggage—may shift during flight. Rather than meticulously segment customers according to potential return, they itch to get to market as quickly and cheaply as possible, a principle Sarasvathy calls affordable loss. Repeatedly, the entrepreneurs in her study expressed impatience with anything that smacked of extensive planning, particularly traditional market research. (Inc.’s own research backs this up. One survey of Inc. 500 CEOs found that 60 percent had not written business plans before launching their companies. Just 12 percent had done market research.)

….Sarasvathy explains that entrepreneurs’ aversion to market research is symptomatic of a larger lesson they have learned: They do not believe in prediction of any kind. “If you give them data that has to do with the future, they just dismiss it,” she says. “They don’t believe the future is predictable…or they don’t want to be in a space that is very predictable.”

This reminds me of a study that I read about years ago. (No link, unfortunately, since I don’t remember where I saw it.) The gist of it was that a team of researchers tried to figure out what made entrepreneurs different from ordinary corporate executives. Were they less risk averse? It turned out they weren’t. Did they have different kinds of social and/or analytic skills? Not really. Were they more energetic? More visionary? Better able to understand new markets? No, no, and no.

So what was it? They discovered there was one metric on which entrepreneurs scored far higher than other executives: self confidence. Entrepreneurs, it turned out, weren’t right about things any more often than other executives. But they were convinced of their rightness far more, and this fits pretty well with Sarasvathy’s conclusions. Why bother with market research if you know you’re right? Why bother with a business plan? Why wait to get to market? Why listen to other people’s predictions? There’s just no point in any of this stuff if you know you’re right.

I don’t think this is a hugely surprising result. And it certainly explains a lot about entrepreneurial success and failure. If you’re right, and you’re absolutely convinced you’re right, it’s a big advantage. You’ll go full bore all the time, ignore distractions, and just generally take the most aggressive possible actions whenever you can. And if you’re wrong? You’ll do the same thing and flame out spectacularly. The power of single-mindedness is not to be underestimated.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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