Are Entrepreneurs and Managers Different?
by Miki Saxon
Not long ago an entrepreneur with whom I work and I disagreed. He said that entrepreneurs and managers were different and that while entrepreneurs should be managers managers couldn’t be entrepreneurs.
A study using brain scans from MIT professor Maurizio Zollo seems to back him up.
…when entrepreneurs performed explorative tasks, they used both the left and right sides of the frontal parts of their brains, the entire so-called pre-frontal cortex. In comparison, managers tended to use primarily the left sides of the frontal part of their brains. This is an important difference, as the right side of the pre-frontal cortex is associated with creative functions involving high-level thinking (like poetry, arts, etc.), whereas the left side is associated with rational decision-making and logical thinking.
But I still don’t agree.
Zollo isn’t sure either, but thinks that it has to do with the willingness to take risks.
People who just reason with the rational and logical part of the brain might be a bit more risk averse.
Or perhaps that’s more Pavlov’s dog and a conditioned response.
I’d like to see the right/left brain activity of managers at companies known for innovation, such as 3M, Google, and Jeff Immelt’s GE, as opposed to Jack Welch’s.
That would be much better comparison of apples with apples instead of with oranges.
Companies that focus on metrics often lose their innovation mojo.
Managers who work for companies that focus on innovation, have done away with fear and celebrate failure think differently.
Flickr image credit: Nathanial Burton-Bradford
