The keys to decrypt entrepreneurial intuition
Date: April 26, 2017
Name: The keys to decrypt entrepreneurial intuition
Presenter: Gaetan Mourmant
Intuition is a powerful soft skill for many successful entrepreneurs; moreover, intuition tend to help entrepreneurs make better business decisions. Holistic Entrepreneurs meetup invites Gaetan Mourmant, the Founder of XLerateur, to discuss his finding on entrepreneurial intuition. In this presentation, Gaetan Mourmant will share his research on the link between intuition and decision making process. Furthermore, entrepreneurs will learn where energy comes from and how to use them in their journey.
Gaetan Mourmant is the Founder of both XLerateur and Vba101. He is an Affiliate Professor for over 20 years in IESG School of Management. He received his PHD degree in Information Systems from Paris Dauphine University and Georgia State University. He manages many Information Technology projects and helps many entrepreneurs through the study of Entrepreneurial Intuition. Moreover, he publishes many publications, including “Awakening the Dormant Dream: The Concept of Entrepreneurial Shift of Understanding” and “Another road to IT turnover: The Entrepreneurial path”.
The passion of decision making comes a long way for Gaetan Mourmant. He started exploring the concept of analytical business decision making through Excel, statistics, and business intelligence. As he shifted to entrepreneurial decision making, he accomplished his master thesis and PHD. Now he concentrates on meditation, intuition and energy. This includes energy healing and mindfulness meditation.
“Optimism 100%, naivety 300%”
Mourmant believes that when entrepreneurs can control their energy, they are able to control their emotions. For example, when they start their companies, they will have tools to reduce their ungrounded fear. Moreover, it is about reducing the negative energy.
Based on the synthesis of Shepherd et al., (2015), Mourmant explains that entrepreneurial decision can be organized in four different type.
- Opportunity assessment decision
- Entrepreneurial entry decisions
- Decision about exploring opportunity
- Entrepreneurial exit decision
The decision to start a business and the development of entrepreneurial intuition can be a long process for many entrepreneurs. Many entrepreneurs are looking to achieve their expert intuition, which is defined as “a non-conscious process, involving holistic associations that are produced rapidly, which result in affectively charged judgement” Dane and Pratt (2007) . It is important to explore intuition because it can draw out entrepreneurs’ inborn ability to make accurate decisions. Mourmant believes intuition can also be hindered by more formalized procedure. However, intuition is particularly helpful in turbulent environment.
Mourmant shares that as employee climbs the corporate ladder, their problems get more complex and the environment gets more turbulent. For entrepreneurs, the environment is turbulent. Therefore, they tend to discover their analytical skills are less and less useful. This can be a major problem. The higher the position in the corporate world, the more intuition they will need to use. Why is that? Because the more turbulent is the environment.
Dante and Pratt (2007) suggests that intuition can be seen either as process or an outcome. It is effectively based on the domain-relevant experience, as well as the complexity of the mental schemas of the entrepreneur. Task characteristics also plays a role. Research shows that entrepreneurs tend to experience that the complexity of the domain-relevant schemes may increase the effectiveness of intuition. In other words, entrepreneurs need to ensure that the complexity of their mental schema matches the environmental complexity. They need to apply and discover the pattern through intensive training. Research shows it requires 10 years of intense training to achieve expertise in a domain.
Mourmant introduces Jungian Psychological types. The theory of Psychological types comes from Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. Further developments by Myers, Briggs or Keirsey, lead to the creation of personality tests. There are four dimensions in the Jungian’s Theory.
Where did entrepreneurs get their energy from? It comes from either introversion or extroversion. Introversion focuses on the inner world, such as thoughts, ideas, and experience. Moreover, extroversion focuses on outer world, such as people and activity.
How do entrepreneurs handle perception? It comes from either sensing or intuition. Sensing means entrepreneurs look on detail or tangible items. However, intuition means entrepreneurs look for big picture and relationships.
How do entrepreneurs make judgment? It comes from either thinking or feeling. Thinking means entrepreneurs are more logic and objective. However, feeling means entrepreneurs are more into empathy or guided by personal values.
How entrepreneurs relate to the outer world? It can be perceiving or judging. Perceiving means open to change and not constrained by plan. Judging means making plan and having deadline.
These four areas make up personality. There are 16 possible personality types. Mourmant emphasizes based on research, most entrepreneurs will rely on their “Extroverted Intuition”, the intuition for which the direction is the outside world. Such extraverted intuition is used for spotting opportunities in the environment, which is a very important skill for entrepreneurs. The extraverted intuition can be developed by all personality types, and is naturally present in type such as the ENTP (Extraverted, Intuition, Thinking, Perceiving). Of course, the other dimensions should support the Extraverted Intuition, for instance to execute the plan (Judging) in a very precise matter (Sensing Introverted).
It is important for entrepreneurs to discover their own personality type. By knowing which one they have, they will know which dimensions are potentially missing; hence, developing their skills or working with people with complementary skills.
“A great entrepreneur, you will become”
Mourmant is currently working on deeper understanding of Spiritual Intuition. This research focuses on step by step process through meditation.
His next courses can be found here: https://www.eventbrite.ca/o/holistic-entrepreneurs-12005393580
Bibliography :
Dane, E., & Pratt, M. G. (2007). Exploring intuition and its role in managerial decision making. Academy of management review, 32(1), 33-54.
Mourmant, G., Gallivan, M. J., & Kalika, M. (2009). Another road to IT turnover: the entrepreneurial path. European Journal of Information Systems, 18(5), 498-521.
Shepherd, D. A., Williams, T. A., & Patzelt, H. (2015). Thinking about entrepreneurial decision making: Review and research agenda. Journal of management, 41(1), 11-46.
G Mourmant, K Voutsina (2017), Awakening the Dormant Dream: The Concept of Entrepreneurial Mind-Shifts. Upcoming in the DATABASE for Advances in Information Systems
