Neuroentrepreneurship - don't miss out on the talent!

There are millions of people who have great ideas and see the world differently but don't gain success and these are people with neurodivergent talented brains that make connections that others don't see and find new ways to solve problems.

This week I have been thinking a lot about why some people with ADHD (and other neurodivergent traits) are great entrepreneurs and what, if any, are the X factors that may stop ideas from translating into actions. I have focused mostly on ADHD for this blog and looked at the research relating to this.ADHD often has a bad reputation and has been associated with risky behaviours. I am keen we flip the narrative so employers can see what they could be missing and embrace people with ADHD for their wonderful ideas and views on the world now and in the future.

In the last few years, there has been increasing interest in the relationship between neurodiversity and entrepreneurship and how positive neurodivergent traits if harnessed could be useful in many different sectors of society. Small business enterprises are at the heart of the UK. SMEs accounting for three-fifths of the employment and around half of the turnover in the UK private sector estimated at ￡2.3 trillion. If we want growth and innovation we need to encourage new businesses to develop and thrive and many ideas could be coming from neurodiverse talents if harnessed and creativity allowed to blossom from a young age. Hackathons are just one way of creating communities together on and offline to come up with novel solutions. Astra Zeneca, Google, NVidia, and Microsoft for example ran an embracing Neurodiversity 24-hour inclusive hackathon earlier this year.

What is entrepreneurship?

Shane in 2012 described entrepreneurship as the identification, evaluation, and exploitation of opportunities.

People love to know about brains and see if there could be 'hot spots' in the brain we could say are related specifically to entrepreneurship. Some neuroscientists have explored how studies of the brain can potentially further our understanding of how uncertainty is processed by an entrepreneur. However, there are some people who say if we go down the road of over-focusing on neuroimaging we may end up with a reductionist approach and oversimplification regarding entrepreneurship (Tracey and Schluppeck,2014) and even call our obsession with brainy stuff 'brain pornography'!

We need to also be cautious assuming a cause and effect i.e. dyslexia people will become leaders or ADHD people will be creatives. The brain is amazingly plastic and changes over time due to training, experience, and learning (Herdener et al., 2010) and therefore associations between neuroscience and entrepreneurship can be bi-directional. Our upbringing and the environment we learn in when young also shapes us as adults. A bad start for some can have a scarring effect.

Despite these caveats, there increasing interest in the association between people with ADHD (and other neurodivergent traits) and entrepreneurial behaviours. We spiky profiles which mean some people have great talents in some areas and if exploited could be beneficial for all.

What terms have been used in relation to entrepreneurship?

Pharrell Williams interestingly said:

'Some people say there's nothing new under the sun. I still think that there's room to create, you know. And intuition doesn't necessarily come from under this sun. It comes from within. '

To create something new you need to be alert and aware of what's going on around you. The concept of entrepreneurial alertness (Hu et al, 2018) was first proposed by Kirzner in 1973 and this concerned an individual’s awareness, assessment, and orientation toward uncertainties and changes in the external environment and context (Uy et al., 2015). It means someone is alert to recognizing where there is the potential for market disequilibrium. (We cannot ignore the last 15 months to say this is a time of uncertainty and volatility i.e. VUCA!)

Alertness plays an important role in the processes of opportunity exploration and exploitation. Inquisitiveness and creativity are important combinations as well as identifying a resource need or a change in demand. ( I wonder who made a load of money from toilet paper shortages at the very start of Covid-19. )They recognised a need and responded fast.

Some people talk about intuition or gut instinct. An intuitive cognitive style can enhance the ability to act entrepreneurially because of the increased potential for recognizing ideas that could lead to new ventures.

If the person is more attuned to scanning and searching for information, and they are also more confident in their ability to identify and recognize entrepreneurial opportunities.

Someone with ADHD can often scan different situations at the same time successfully. Their difficulty in 'tuning out' may in fact be an advantage in some ways if utilised appropriately.

Someone told me the other day how they often listen to three conversations at the same time in a room full of people. I often describe ADHD as having multiple screens on the TV all on at the same time. If used you can bring these ideas together and see connections that others don't see.

Shapero and Sokol were one of the key people who proposed a model (1982) of entrepreneurial intention with three key components:

• perceived feasibility - is it possible to do?
• perceived desirability - is it desirable to do?
• the propensity to act - do I want to do it?

Other models have been described too. ( See review)

The other aspect is also perceived behavioural control, which is defined as an individual’s awareness of whether a specific function or action will be easy or difficult to perform which has been seen as the most important to focus on (Autio et al, 2001).

So why consider neuroentrepreneurship?

We have seen growing numbers of highly successful people standing up and saying they have ADHD /Dyslexia/Autism from different sectors of society. Some have come up with novel ideas and solutions to real-world problems. I have also seen people despite having great ideas not being able to translate them into actions. I wondered more importantly what the barriers to success could be and what could be done about this in school and the workplace.

The association with ADHD and entrepreneurship was suggested in the popular press about a decade ago (The Economist 2012) and Julie Logan published work about Dyslexia and entrepreneurship in 2009. As I mentioned persons with ADHD can be seen negatively. The core symptoms described are usually expressed as challenges maintaining focus and attention and being impulsive. I am not denying this at all but considering the social and environmental factors that may make it harder for that person to show their talents.

For some, difficulty in focusing on things of low interest when being constrained by the problem, or needing to sit still in a meeting or class and being seen as 'fidgety' rather than seeing it can help that person think better if they move. The design of how and where we work and learn can make a difference to our ability to be creative.

I hated History at school. It was all about dates ( which I could never remember) and nothing about the social history of the time and hence I got bored quickly and endlessly doodled flowers. As soon as I was in a position where I could see the relevance of what I was doing and got to medical school and I was on a ward talking to patients my brain started to 'ping'! I could easily think about the 100 reasons for a cough or for a headache for example. It was interesting to listen to people. I could make sense of the information I had learned. It made sense to me.

A growing understanding of ADHD leads us to see that some people are able to super focus given the right circumstances to do so. For individuals with ADHD, the wrong environment can stifle creativity. Alternatively, if the environment suits the person’s way of learning it can stimulate the acquisition of different skills and strategies that permit improved functioning (B?rger et al., 2000; Sonuga-Barke, 2003). For example, during Covid-19 working at home has meant I can decide when I stand up or walk around. I doodle and have 'fiddle' toys on my desk.

All help me to focus on different tasks and at different times. Movement helps me to think. I am terrible if I have to sit still for ages. My morning walk is where ideas and images bubble to the surface without trying.

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1889) wrote: “All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking”.Opezzo et al  (2014) more recently showed the more creative ideas emerged were when outside walking.

(*Note: Perhaps as we have better weather ( and for safety) we need to reconsider the walking meeting as a way of interacting and growing our ideas ? )

Adults with ADHD have been shown to have higher levels of original creative thinking, and idea generation on some experimental tasks and higher levels of real-world creative achievement, compared to adults without ADHD (White & Shah, 2011). It has been noticed that entrepreneurial adults with ADHD have superior scanning skills and are able to connect disparate pieces of information. When this co-occurs with being good at idea generation then there can be a move to actual implementation of new ideas.

 Moore et al (2019) suggest that the neurodivergent traits associated with ADHD are meaningfully related to aspects of an entrepreneurial mindset. Their work suggests that entrepreneurs with ADHD employ a more intuitive cognitive style and demonstrate high levels of entrepreneurial alertness. ADHD is positively related to both entrepreneurial intentions and initiation of business ventures (Dimic & Orlov, 2014; Lerner et al., 2018b; Verheul et al., 2015, 2016) ADHD is also positively associated with individual-level entrepreneurial orientation (Thurik et al., 2016) and engagement in entrepreneurial actions (Wiklund et al., 2016, 2017).

Executive functioning deficits can be problematic for people with ADHD as to stay on a task once the more interesting things have been considered. Ironically it could be these deficits coupled with delay aversion could potentially cause entrepreneurs with ADHD to be able to adjust their environment as a mode of change (i.e., move on to different and novel situations) rather than concentrate on one task and the refinement of a schema (Sonuga-Barke, 2002). This could be why people with ADHD are great at initiating projects but find it very hard to do the completion part of a task once the exciting and novel parts have been found.

Entrepreneurs with ADHD are associated with higher levels of need for achievement, autonomy, and creativity, as well as moderate risk-taking (Dimic & Orlov, 2014). It could also be why we can be an oppositional bunch when we are forced to do something that feels blatantly uncomfortable to us!

This entrepreneurial and somewhat risk-taking approach maybe because of ideas not being inhibited by executive functions (holding us back)(Brown, 2013).

Maybe ( whacky idea?) disinhibition and impulsivity is a really good thing for creativity if utilised appropriately!

What may reduce entrepreneurial intentions?

Not being able to showcase your talent can be very frustrating.

De Bono ( who died recently) thought that rigid thinking and an obsession with testing led to many children leaving school: “believing they are stupid. They are not stupid at all, many are good thinkers who have never had the chance to show it. But that lack of confidence will pervade the rest of their lives ”.

Mark Twain said: "All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure."

Well, it turns out he was partially right. Self-confidence is important.

 Bandura described the concept of self-efficacy both as a mediator and moderator for action. We know that neurodivergent children have lowered self-esteem often driven by being bullied in school, and feelings of difference and shame.

 Powers et al (2020) have also recently shown that those with dyslexia are more likely to have a negative impact on their entrepreneurial self-efficacy perceptions. They also revealed that it is the relationship with a person's perception of their self-efficacy that is one of the mediators between dyslexia and entrepreneurial intentions. This is important. Someone may be entrepreneurial but their lack of confidence may limit their ability to translate this into actions.

What can you do to promote neuroentrepreneurship?

• Start early in school allowing an environment that allows neurodiverse thinking and creative ideas to thrive.
• Taking a strengths approach to neurodiversity so children can grow up proud and not feel shame will aid self-perception.
• Mentorship programs - Fitzgibbon and Connor showed this was associated with successful dyslexic entrepreneurship outcomes.
• Incubator hubs and hackathons can be great places to allow talents to develop with support in place.

Notes:

Professor Amanda Kirby comes from a very neurodivergent family. She has entrepreneurs who successfully designed things like Patient Controlled Analgesia ( very proud of her late Dad - Professor Michael Rosen who was known as having the most untidy office in the hospital and the worst handwriting ever!) and children and grandchildren who are coming up with some amazing ideas and want them to flourish too but knowing they need to be seen in a positive framing.

As CEO of Do-IT Solutions, she has developed with colleagues Profiling tools that allow people to see their spiky profiles and help organisations to maximise talent.

She is very excited about a book she has written with the fab Theo Smith on:

Neurodiversity at Work: Drive Innovation, Performance and Productivity with a Neurodiverse Workforce

20% discount if you use the promo code: AHR20 (alongside free shipping to the UK and US) at www.koganpage.com