Tag: entrepreneurship

If business owners can learn to embrace two certainties, they’ll be able to get through anything, says David Sax. In his new piece for Entrepreneur, he considers how the challenges presented by COVID-19 are showing us what we’re capable of.

When it comes to making a first impression, whether it be a job interview, a networking event, or a pitch, many people tend to cater to the other person’s interests, rather than behave according to their own. But does this approach help or harm our chances of getting what we want? Harvard professors and fellow Lavin Speakers Laura Huang and Francesca Gino explore in their new research.

It turns out, laughing at your job interviewer’s jokes or pretending to adopt an interest in their hobbies won’t necessarily land you a job. New research by Laura Huang, Francesca Gino, and Ovul Sezer suggests that catering to someone else’s interests can actually increase anxiety and, as a result, hinder, instead of improve, performance. Why? In a field study where entrepreneurs pitched their ideas to potential investors, the researchers found that anxiety was heightened by trying to anticipate what another person wants to hear. Against conventional wisdom, it appears that catering to someone else, rather than behaving authentically, will hurt our chances of success.

Read the full report here.

To book Francesca Gino or Laura Huang for your next speaking event, contact The Lavin Agency today, their exclusive speakers bureau.

In her debut book Edge, Harvard Business School professor Laura Huang busts the myth that hard work alone will get us to our goals. Instead, she teaches us how to find our “edge”—the unique qualities that set us apart—and open doors to money, time, and connections.  

Wouldn’t it be nice if career advancement was directly linked to how hard we work, or the skills we possess? Unfortunately, the reality is more complicated than that. Biases, stereotypes, and perceptions of who we are often get in the way of our success—even if we’re the most qualified for the job.

As a business professor who studies early entrepreneurship, Laura Huang has seen her fair share of failure. But we needn’t give up because the obstacles are stacked against us, she says. Instead of letting other people’s perceptions limit us, we can actively shape those beliefs—in part by recognizing our own strengths and flaws—into a competitive edge. “Life isn’t fair. We can’t just wait around for people to make the right decisions for us,” Huang explains. “So how do we take all the disadvantages stacked against us and flip them in our favor to succeed within an imperfect system?”

Huang’s book Edge: Turning Adversity Into Advantage (Out Today!) draws from award-winning research on entrepreneurial intuition, persuasion, and implicit decision-making to show us how to strategically turn our shortcomings into assets.

To book speaker Laura Huang for your next event, contact The Lavin Agency today, and speak to a knowledgeable member of our sales team.

Founded by Professor Ajay Agrawal at the Rotman School, the Creative Destruction Lab has supported over 1,500 founders from over 30 countries—generating more than 4 billion dollars in equity value. Now, in its partnership with International business school HEC Paris, the CDL is poised to “play a vital role in building the next generation of European deep tech champions.” 

After starting a business with her brother Ravinder at the tender age of 19, Manjit Minhas became the President, CEO, and sole owner Minhas Breweries—the tenth largest brewery in the world. In a new feature in Menu, she opens up about the challenges she faced in the industry, and how she grew a successful business despite them. 

You’re in the middle of pitching investors on your business idea, and someone brings up contradictory evidence to a claim you’ve made. Do you acknowledge it and change your mind? Or do you dig in your heels and argue that you know best? New research by Francesca Gino (featured in Inc) suggests the former will make you look smarter. 

Francesca Gino, Leslie K. John, and their collaborators tested pitch competitions to see which situation fared better. They found that “Entrepreneurs who changed their minds during the pitch were almost six times more likely to advance to the final round of the competition.” The reason?  “Participants perceived those who changed their minds as lacking confidence, but demonstrating intelligence.”

So the next time you’re worried about changing your mind publicly, remember that being flexible can actually work to your benefit, while being stubborn could actually have adverse effects. You can read more about the phenomenon here.

To book speaker Francesca Gino for your next speaking engagement, contact The Lavin Agency today.

Through their scholarship and teaching, The Academy of Management Journal aims to inspire and enable a better world. This year, they’re honoring top business school professor Laura Huang with the AMJ Best Paper Award for her groundbreaking work on how the gender gap affects startup funding. 

Male entrepreneurs tend to raise higher levels of funding than their female counterparts; however, the reason for this disparity remains unknown and widely contested. In their paper, We Ask Men to Win and Women Not to Lose: Closing the Gender Gap in Startup Funding, Laura Huang and her colleagues found strong evidence that the gap is caused by gender bias in the questions posed by investors. Through a Q&A intervention on the TechCrunch Disrupt conference between 2010 and 2016, Huang and her co-authors discovered that male entrepreneurs were more likely to be asked promotion-focused questions, while female entrepreneurs tended to be asked prevention-focused questions.

The paper demonstrates that each additional prevention-focused question significantly hinders an entrepreneur’s ability to raise capital for their idea. “By experimentally testing an intervention, we find that entrepreneurs can significantly increase funding for their startups when responding to prevention-focused questions with promotion-focused answers.” Offering evidence-based tactics for reducing the gender disadvantage, the paper has both practical and theoretical implications for entrepreneurship.

To book Laura Huang for your next speaking event, contact The Lavin Agency today.

How can we make our paths to success a little easier? We all have biases working for and against us, says Laura Huang, one of the top business school professors in America and author of the hotly anticipated book EDGE (2020). Whether it’s a natural confidence (or lack thereof); established networks (or no professional connections at all), if we learn what these biases are, we can strategically empower ourselves—in other words find our edge—and create personal success. 

In the video below she discusses one of the business world’s most harmful biases—why female entrepreneurs face tougher questions from venture capitalists—and offers solutions to combat it.  

To book Laura Huang, or another business speaker for your next event, contact The Lavin Agency.