What Science can teach you about Business Success?

---

Entrepreneurs are a generation's greatest accomplishment-generations after generations. We stare at these individuals, dumbfounded. How did they have the bravery, guts, risk-taking attitude, creative intellect, and 'insert any other success characteristic here'? We take a seat and wish.

If only we could have such characteristics. If only we could develop a concept, have the courage to invest some money, and take some risks-what a shame. Then maybe we'd be living our ideal life, controlling our fate, and pursuing our passions.

We name magazines after them, read stories on what it's like to be them, and watch memes about them. For all intents and purposes, we are obsessed with success. The fantasy lives on in our minds but not elsewhere.

As a scientist by training and a designer at work (yeah, that's what I do), the confluence of business and science has piqued my interest. Is there a method to predict if you'll be a successful entrepreneur? We'll find out soon enough.

A successful entrepreneur's personality

It should come as no surprise that the first place we go when determining what makes a successful business is a personality. We look at the success we see all around us from our screens, and it's simple to connect that success with the qualities we all notice.

1) - Outspoken.

2) - Driven.

3) - Go-getter.

We could all create a list of characteristics that we believe define a successful entrepreneur. Science, on the other hand, came to the opposite conclusion in the 1980s. In fact, studies concluded that there was no relationship between personality and success as an entrepreneur. It was all a blur of craziness.

But a question like that wasn't going to go quietly. With the resurgence of the twenty-first-century preoccupation with success, the lid has been raised once again on the relationship between personality and successful businesses. Unsatisfied with the response, academics started to wonder what makes individuals most inclined to pursue a profession independently. More crucially, what characteristics made them most likely to succeed.

The top five personality characteristics

According to experts, the big five personality characteristics are closely related to job choices. In other words, who you influence what you do with your life. So there you have it.

The 'big-5 model' encompasses a model's top five personality traits:

Extraversion (extroversion vs. solitary/reserved)

agreeableness (friendliness/compassion vs. skepticism/rationality)

openness to new experiences (creative/inquisitive vs. consistent/cautious)

conscientiousness (efficiency/organization vs. excess/carelessness)

(sensitive/nervous vs. resilient/confident) neuroticism

With the introduction of this new model, it was only a matter of time until a scientist connected the dots and began to figure out what makes a successful company owner.

Shelley M Farrington investigated this issue. Farrington wanted to know what characteristics successful small company entrepreneurs had, and she discovered the answer by, you guessed it, using science. She sent surveys to hundreds of company owners with varying degrees of success. She did some smart arithmetic after getting 383 back to figure out one thing.

Is it true that certain personality characteristics have a major effect on the success of a business? And what is the answer? Yes.

"The results of this research indicate that people with high levels of the personality characteristics Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience are more likely to create successful small businesses." - Farrington's

But the science doesn't end there - no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, …

We've all heard about the entrepreneur's hardships and tribulations. It's why, for fear of falling in, many of us don't dare to put our toes too far into the water. Being able to deal with failure is a prerequisite for being an entrepreneur.

If you can't deal with the inevitable, if you can't dance while you're failing and learn to love the ride, you should get off now.

The study report titled "I'm Loving It!" is amusingly named. Researchers discovered that certain behaviors made entrepreneurs more likely to succeed in their study, "What Makes the Successful Entrepreneur Affectively Committed to Entrepreneurial Performance."

The research conducted interviews with six extremely successful entrepreneurs and discovered the following:

"We discover that affective commitment is the most important component of commitment influencing entrepreneurial performance, and that passion in pursuing goals, combined with positive inherited and learned values, and the possession of exceptional personality, are found to positively influence the aspirations of successful entrepreneurs to endure challenges and unpredictable failures."

In other words, individuals who were optimistic and passionate about achieving their objectives could withstand the difficulties that come with the entrepreneurial lifestyle.

But if it were that simple, it would be much too simple.

As with anything else in science, there are always alternative points of view to be investigated and paths to be explored, allowing fresh scientists to look at the same issue through a different lens.

Cue the social entrepreneur study.

What exactly is a social entrepreneur, you may wonder? Anyone who starts a company to address a social, cultural, or environmental problem qualifies. This sheds new insight on the entire personality issue.

We are no longer discussing the creation of heaps of riches in the manner of Jeff Bezos, or we may be, but there is a benefit to the world as well. The social entrepreneur puts a wrench in the works here.

In a similar line, the same issue was raised in research on social entrepreneurs. Which of the big five personality characteristics are important for social entrepreneurship success?

"The results show that agreeableness has a favorable impact on all aspects of social entrepreneurship, while openness has a positive impact on social vision, creativity, and financial returns."

You may not have thought about agreeableness as a personality characteristic linked with business success. It might have been at the bottom of the list. But, as is often the case, what we see on television does not necessarily represent reality.

So, do you have the personality to succeed as an entrepreneur?

Without a doubt.

---