I know that those of you on the semester system are desperately trying to finish up the semester, but please don't forget that your abstracts for my JBTC special issue are due November 30.
The theme of the special issue is "The Rhetoric of Entrepreneurship: Theories, Methodologies, and Practices." If you're not sure that your project is the right fit for this special issue, please don't hesitate to shoot me an email. Looking forward to your contributions!
Friday, November 20, 2015
Sunday, November 08, 2015
Reading :: Pitch Anything
Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal
By Orem Klaff
Pitch Anything is a set of techniques, portrayed as based on neuroscience, to assert social dominance during pitches and thus win deals. Orem Klaff, by his own account an accomplished pitcher who routinely does $30 million deals, describes his approach with the acronym STRONG:
This approach has merits and drawbacks.
In terms of merits, this approach teaches people to fake, and eventually feel, confidence in themselves and their pitching. It does help them to realize that they don't have to think or act as supplicants; they can recognize their own worth in the potential partnership, and they can think of it as a partnership rather than a transaction. They can also recognize and put names to adverse conditions, especially moves that their audiences might take to repattern interactions. The approach is finely geared to pitching a good or service as is. That is, the technique is kairotic, tuned to presenting a specific deal at a particular moment and decision point. There's no ongoing development or negotiation over time. Think in terms of deals such as bidding to finance an airport (which is the extended example at the end of the book). Who can sell the deal most seductively? For that reason, STRONG relies on manufacturing and sustaining a moment of social dominance.
But these merits also point to the drawbacks. In particular, the pitches in which I am most interested are the ones that involve cocreation, such as pitches involving technology commercialization. In these pitches, the offering is not fixed and can be pivoted easily in response to an emerging understanding of the clients' needs. Ideally, they constitute an ongoing conversation that can yield changes in the offering's design or use as well as the arguments for the offering. And for those pitches, the STRONG method would be less effective because establishing social dominance tends to short-circuit such conversations. If the offering is produced and developed through an ongoing partnership rather than presented as a complete package at a given moment, the social dynamics have to be different. It's not a seduction, it's an ongoing relationship.
For that reason, I was underwhelmed by the book. It was too narrowly focused, too consumed with winning and dominating, too unconcerned with the long view. Because of its essentially competitive orientation, it limits the horizon and collaborative possibilities of the pitch. Still, it may provide the careful reader with a vocabulary for understanding the hostile moves one might expect from pitch audiences.
By Orem Klaff
Pitch Anything is a set of techniques, portrayed as based on neuroscience, to assert social dominance during pitches and thus win deals. Orem Klaff, by his own account an accomplished pitcher who routinely does $30 million deals, describes his approach with the acronym STRONG:
Set the frameHe illustrates each lesson with multiple stories, usually with himself as the protagonist who succeeds by dint of his successful efforts, sometimes with others as protagonists who fail, and very rarely with illustrations of his own failures. After all, he has to set the "authority frame" in order for us to respect him. (The limited accounts of his failures constitute limited concessions in which he graciously redistributes social power.)
Tell the story
Reveal the intrigue
Offer the prize
Nail the hookpoint
Get the deal
This approach has merits and drawbacks.
In terms of merits, this approach teaches people to fake, and eventually feel, confidence in themselves and their pitching. It does help them to realize that they don't have to think or act as supplicants; they can recognize their own worth in the potential partnership, and they can think of it as a partnership rather than a transaction. They can also recognize and put names to adverse conditions, especially moves that their audiences might take to repattern interactions. The approach is finely geared to pitching a good or service as is. That is, the technique is kairotic, tuned to presenting a specific deal at a particular moment and decision point. There's no ongoing development or negotiation over time. Think in terms of deals such as bidding to finance an airport (which is the extended example at the end of the book). Who can sell the deal most seductively? For that reason, STRONG relies on manufacturing and sustaining a moment of social dominance.
But these merits also point to the drawbacks. In particular, the pitches in which I am most interested are the ones that involve cocreation, such as pitches involving technology commercialization. In these pitches, the offering is not fixed and can be pivoted easily in response to an emerging understanding of the clients' needs. Ideally, they constitute an ongoing conversation that can yield changes in the offering's design or use as well as the arguments for the offering. And for those pitches, the STRONG method would be less effective because establishing social dominance tends to short-circuit such conversations. If the offering is produced and developed through an ongoing partnership rather than presented as a complete package at a given moment, the social dynamics have to be different. It's not a seduction, it's an ongoing relationship.
For that reason, I was underwhelmed by the book. It was too narrowly focused, too consumed with winning and dominating, too unconcerned with the long view. Because of its essentially competitive orientation, it limits the horizon and collaborative possibilities of the pitch. Still, it may provide the careful reader with a vocabulary for understanding the hostile moves one might expect from pitch audiences.
Reading :: The Organization Man
The Organization Man
By William H. Whyte, Jr.
I had a very odd moment when reading this classic, oft-mentioned book from 1956. In Chapter 5, "Togetherness," the author describes how the National Training Lab in Group Development had been experimenting with the leaderless group. He notes that "One of the most astute students of the group, sociologist William Foote Whyte, was moved to write some second thoughts on his experience at Bethel." The author lauds Whyte's contribution and later investigations.
The passage confused me because I couldn't understand why the author was talking about himself in the third person. I had long assumed the two William Whytes—William F. and William H.—were the same. When I realized my mistake, the first thing I felt was relief.
Why relief? William F. Whyte's work is not always careful, but it's generally more textured than the broad strokes found in this book. The Organization Man is billed as "the first complete study of a way of life that many Americans are now leading ... life under the protection of the big organization" (back cover). Like any "study" of millions of people, this one relies on a combination of broad statistics and narrow anecdote. It attempts to characterize changes in education, jobs, careers, mobility, and teamwork as emanating from the shift toward large organizations and their ethos. Oddly, these discussions seem oblivious to other changes that affect the above: the shift from agricultural to industrial and service work; the impact of the automobile; the GI Bill and the broadening of the university system to serve the needs of a far more diverse set of students; the postwar boom.
As you might expect, William H. Whyte has a deeply (small-c) conservative understanding of how things ought to be, and his broad sketch of organizational impact in the US seems to look back constantly to prewar America as a guide: a time when people were stubbornly independent, created and lived in solid multigenerational communities, and studied subjects without regard to vocation. That is, although he doesn't put things in this way, he looks back to a more predominantly agrarian US that had not yet taken on a leadership role in the world. This essential change in the US' geopolitical standing—and in the source of its wealth—seems not to factor into his analysis at all.
In that context, I did find the take on universities to be interesting. Whyte notes that "Each June since the war, commencement speakers have been announcing that at last the humanities are coming back, and each fall more and more students enroll in something else," specifically vocational work (by which Whyte means engineering and business) (p.87). In particular,
I stopped reading this book at Ch.22 (out of 29 chapters). Maybe I'll get back to it, but I doubt it. It's perhaps useful for understanding historical context, but I didn't find it to be intrinsically useful for understanding these societal changes per se.
By William H. Whyte, Jr.
I had a very odd moment when reading this classic, oft-mentioned book from 1956. In Chapter 5, "Togetherness," the author describes how the National Training Lab in Group Development had been experimenting with the leaderless group. He notes that "One of the most astute students of the group, sociologist William Foote Whyte, was moved to write some second thoughts on his experience at Bethel." The author lauds Whyte's contribution and later investigations.
The passage confused me because I couldn't understand why the author was talking about himself in the third person. I had long assumed the two William Whytes—William F. and William H.—were the same. When I realized my mistake, the first thing I felt was relief.
Why relief? William F. Whyte's work is not always careful, but it's generally more textured than the broad strokes found in this book. The Organization Man is billed as "the first complete study of a way of life that many Americans are now leading ... life under the protection of the big organization" (back cover). Like any "study" of millions of people, this one relies on a combination of broad statistics and narrow anecdote. It attempts to characterize changes in education, jobs, careers, mobility, and teamwork as emanating from the shift toward large organizations and their ethos. Oddly, these discussions seem oblivious to other changes that affect the above: the shift from agricultural to industrial and service work; the impact of the automobile; the GI Bill and the broadening of the university system to serve the needs of a far more diverse set of students; the postwar boom.
As you might expect, William H. Whyte has a deeply (small-c) conservative understanding of how things ought to be, and his broad sketch of organizational impact in the US seems to look back constantly to prewar America as a guide: a time when people were stubbornly independent, created and lived in solid multigenerational communities, and studied subjects without regard to vocation. That is, although he doesn't put things in this way, he looks back to a more predominantly agrarian US that had not yet taken on a leadership role in the world. This essential change in the US' geopolitical standing—and in the source of its wealth—seems not to factor into his analysis at all.
In that context, I did find the take on universities to be interesting. Whyte notes that "Each June since the war, commencement speakers have been announcing that at last the humanities are coming back, and each fall more and more students enroll in something else," specifically vocational work (by which Whyte means engineering and business) (p.87). In particular,
look what's happened to English. Now it is becoming 'Communication Skills,' and in what is called an interdisciplinary effort everybody from the engineers to applied psychologists are muscling in. In some cases, Michigan State, for example, they not only have whole departments of communication but have made it the center of required under-class courses. In others, it has been made the heart of a vocational training in advertising and journalistic research. (pp.102-103).He cites Drucker as saying that English, particularly writing poetry or short stories, is potentially the most important vocational course. But
That English is being slighted by business and students alike does not speak well of business. But neither does it speak well of English departments. They are right to recoil from justifying English on the narrow grounds of immediate utility, as better report writing and the like. But one can recoil too far. In so resisting the vocationalizing of English, they have contributed to it. If technicians of 'business writing' and the psychologists have been able to denature English into a 'communication' science, it is because the greater relevance of English has been left undrawn. (p.108)Whyte finishes with a wan defense of English as providing universals but insufficiently addressing the particulars. This line of argument, nearly 60 years old, is still being deployed, and to just as little effect.
I stopped reading this book at Ch.22 (out of 29 chapters). Maybe I'll get back to it, but I doubt it. It's perhaps useful for understanding historical context, but I didn't find it to be intrinsically useful for understanding these societal changes per se.
Sunday, October 18, 2015
Topsight > Slide decks
Are you teaching (or learning) from Topsight?
If so, I hope you'll find my Topsight slide decks to be useful. These decks are a version of the ones I've been using in my field methods classes.
If so, I hope you'll find my Topsight slide decks to be useful. These decks are a version of the ones I've been using in my field methods classes.
- They are designed to help students understand the concepts, but
- they also go beyond the book in places, adding material, and
- they include group exercises to facilitate small group discussion at each stage of the process.
These slide decks are available, along with other downloadable materials, at http://clayspinuzzi.com/book/topsight/. Take a look. I'd love to get your feedback—I'm at clay.spinuzzi@gmail.com.
Friday, October 09, 2015
Reading :: The Innovator's Dilemma
The Innovator's Dilemma
By Clayton M. Christensen
The Innovator's Dilemma is a "classic bestseller," according to the cover. And it's a classic business book in the sense that it makes the whole of its argument in the first chapter. The rest of the book consists of elaboration and proof.
Here's the key insight: "in the cases of well-managed firms ... good management was the reason they failed to stay atop their industries. Precisely because these firms listened to their customers, invested aggressively in new technologies that would provide their customers more and better products of the sort they wanted, and because they carefully studied market trends and systematically allocated investment capital to innovations that promised the best returns, they lost their positions of leadership" (p.xv).
That's the innovator's dilemma: "the logical, competent decisions of management that are critical to the success of these companies are also the reasons why they lose their positions of leadership." It's difficult to balance the demands of innovating with the demands of current customers.
If that sounds familiar, perhaps you have read Peter F. Drucker's Innovation and Entrepreneurship, which warns of the same issue. But Christensen makes at least two other contributions.
The first is the "theory of resource dependence," in which he claims that "in the end it is really customers and investors who dictate how money will be spent because companies with investment patterns that don't satisfy their customers and investors don't survive" -- and that fact means that "these companies find it very difficult to invest adequate resources in disruptive technologies .... until their customers want them. And by then it is too late" (p. xxiii).
The second is the author's research into the question. The author examined business data on the disk drive manufacturer industry, which was characterized by extremely rapid innovation, to look for indicators of how this industry developed disruptive innovations. That's the bulk of the remaining chapters, and they do a good job of supporting the author's points.
Should you read The Innovator's Dilemma? Yes, if you're trying to sustain innovation in a company. But, as the above suggests, you don't actually have to finish the book in order to get the main points.
By Clayton M. Christensen
The Innovator's Dilemma is a "classic bestseller," according to the cover. And it's a classic business book in the sense that it makes the whole of its argument in the first chapter. The rest of the book consists of elaboration and proof.
Here's the key insight: "in the cases of well-managed firms ... good management was the reason they failed to stay atop their industries. Precisely because these firms listened to their customers, invested aggressively in new technologies that would provide their customers more and better products of the sort they wanted, and because they carefully studied market trends and systematically allocated investment capital to innovations that promised the best returns, they lost their positions of leadership" (p.xv).
That's the innovator's dilemma: "the logical, competent decisions of management that are critical to the success of these companies are also the reasons why they lose their positions of leadership." It's difficult to balance the demands of innovating with the demands of current customers.
If that sounds familiar, perhaps you have read Peter F. Drucker's Innovation and Entrepreneurship, which warns of the same issue. But Christensen makes at least two other contributions.
The first is the "theory of resource dependence," in which he claims that "in the end it is really customers and investors who dictate how money will be spent because companies with investment patterns that don't satisfy their customers and investors don't survive" -- and that fact means that "these companies find it very difficult to invest adequate resources in disruptive technologies .... until their customers want them. And by then it is too late" (p. xxiii).
The second is the author's research into the question. The author examined business data on the disk drive manufacturer industry, which was characterized by extremely rapid innovation, to look for indicators of how this industry developed disruptive innovations. That's the bulk of the remaining chapters, and they do a good job of supporting the author's points.
Should you read The Innovator's Dilemma? Yes, if you're trying to sustain innovation in a company. But, as the above suggests, you don't actually have to finish the book in order to get the main points.
Reading :: Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit
Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit
By Frank H. Knight
This 1921 classic argues that to understand profit, we must recognize the roles of risk and uncertainty. The difference, he proposes, is that risk is quantifiable (think in terms of actuarial tables); uncertainty is qualitative and unmeasurable (pp.19-20). "It is this 'true' uncertainty, and not risk, as has been argued, which forms the basis of a valid theory of profit and accounts for the divergence between actual and theoretical competition" (p.20).
In Ch. 2, Knight reviews theories of profit. Of special interest to me is his assessment of Marx's contribution, which he dismisses: Marx's understanding of profit was "narrowly literal... wholly uncritical and superficial" (p.27). Thus "they derive a simple classification of income in which all that is not wages is a profit which represents exploitation of the working classes" (p.28).
Knight lists five ways to deal with uncertainty:
1. Consolidation
2. Specialization (including speculation)
3. Control of the future
4. Increased power of prediction (p.239)
5. Directing industry to areas of less uncertainty (p.240).
Knight concludes: "Profit arises out of the inherent, absolute unpredictability of things, out of the sheer brute fact that the results of human activity cannot be anticipated and then only in so far as even a probability calculation in regard to them is impossible and meaningless" (p.311).
Should you read this book? I'm no economist, but I found it easy enough to follow, and for me, the thesis was provocative. Naturally, I like the idea of profit emerging from unquantifiable uncertainty, and the criticism of Marx seems plausible to me. If you're interested in the question of profit, take a look.
By Frank H. Knight
This 1921 classic argues that to understand profit, we must recognize the roles of risk and uncertainty. The difference, he proposes, is that risk is quantifiable (think in terms of actuarial tables); uncertainty is qualitative and unmeasurable (pp.19-20). "It is this 'true' uncertainty, and not risk, as has been argued, which forms the basis of a valid theory of profit and accounts for the divergence between actual and theoretical competition" (p.20).
In Ch. 2, Knight reviews theories of profit. Of special interest to me is his assessment of Marx's contribution, which he dismisses: Marx's understanding of profit was "narrowly literal... wholly uncritical and superficial" (p.27). Thus "they derive a simple classification of income in which all that is not wages is a profit which represents exploitation of the working classes" (p.28).
Knight lists five ways to deal with uncertainty:
1. Consolidation
2. Specialization (including speculation)
3. Control of the future
4. Increased power of prediction (p.239)
5. Directing industry to areas of less uncertainty (p.240).
Knight concludes: "Profit arises out of the inherent, absolute unpredictability of things, out of the sheer brute fact that the results of human activity cannot be anticipated and then only in so far as even a probability calculation in regard to them is impossible and meaningless" (p.311).
Should you read this book? I'm no economist, but I found it easy enough to follow, and for me, the thesis was provocative. Naturally, I like the idea of profit emerging from unquantifiable uncertainty, and the criticism of Marx seems plausible to me. If you're interested in the question of profit, take a look.
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Reading :: Joseph A. Schumpeter
Joseph A. Schumpeter
By Richard Swedberg
Joseph Schumpeter infamously declared that "Early in life I had three ambitions: to be the greatest economist in the world, the greatest horseman in Austria, and the best lover in Vienna. Well, in one of those goals I have failed" (p.3). As the quote suggests, Schumpeter was quite boastful of all three capacities.
He was perhaps justified in at least one of them; let's focus on it, although this biography adequately covers his other two pursuits. At 28, he published his second book, (the German version of ) The Theory of Economic Development, in which he attempted to analyze the economic process through not just economics but also the other social sciences. It is in this book that he first developed the figure of the heroic, charismatic entrepreneur (evidently influenced by Weber's charismatic leader): a figure that innovates by creating new combinations, but does not invent per se (pp.34-35). Eight years later, he became the Austrian finance minister. (He was fired after seven months because he kept trying to undermine the socialist government) (p.60). Schumpeter has been considered Weber's greatest successor as economic sociologist, as well as a close compatriot of the great sociologist (Ch.5). Indeed, Schumpeter excelled at sociological approaches to economics, and was quite poor at mathematics, even though he tirelessly promoted mathematical approaches to economics.
In 1932, after being turned down repeatedly for a position at the University of Berlin, Schumpeter settled for a position at Harvard—just in time to avoid the Nazi takeover (Ch.6). There, he ignored the fact that his students called him "Schumpy" behind his back, and he attempted (unsuccessfully) to attract graduate students to his seminars in mathematical economics. (Undergraduates were beneath his notice, and he wondered aloud whether they were really necessary.) Meanwhile, he worked tirelessly on his enormous two-volume book on business cycles, which was poorly received. His follow-up, a little popular book called Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, was quite well received and is now considered his masterpiece, although he thought it far less serious and consequential than Business Cycles.
"Schumpeter was the only economist of any stature in the United States who took Marxism seriously," Swedberg adds, and his project was similar to Marx's: both understood economic evolution as a process generated by the economic system (p.153). Schumpeter's approach, of course, was Weberian: it understood that the economy and social structure could influence each other (p.155). Although Schumpeter respected Marx as a sociologist, however, he noted several problems with Marx's economics: the labor theory of value was "dead and buried." He took a similarly dim view of Marx's doctrine of surplus value. Marx had no theory of business cycles. Yet he appreciated Marx's achievement in "developing a purely economic theory of change" (p.155).
There is much more in this book on Schumpeter's upbringing and values, his achievements and failures, and of course his adventures as a horseman and a lover. If you're interested in this fascinating economist, I encourage you to read the biography.
By Richard Swedberg
Joseph Schumpeter infamously declared that "Early in life I had three ambitions: to be the greatest economist in the world, the greatest horseman in Austria, and the best lover in Vienna. Well, in one of those goals I have failed" (p.3). As the quote suggests, Schumpeter was quite boastful of all three capacities.
He was perhaps justified in at least one of them; let's focus on it, although this biography adequately covers his other two pursuits. At 28, he published his second book, (the German version of ) The Theory of Economic Development, in which he attempted to analyze the economic process through not just economics but also the other social sciences. It is in this book that he first developed the figure of the heroic, charismatic entrepreneur (evidently influenced by Weber's charismatic leader): a figure that innovates by creating new combinations, but does not invent per se (pp.34-35). Eight years later, he became the Austrian finance minister. (He was fired after seven months because he kept trying to undermine the socialist government) (p.60). Schumpeter has been considered Weber's greatest successor as economic sociologist, as well as a close compatriot of the great sociologist (Ch.5). Indeed, Schumpeter excelled at sociological approaches to economics, and was quite poor at mathematics, even though he tirelessly promoted mathematical approaches to economics.
In 1932, after being turned down repeatedly for a position at the University of Berlin, Schumpeter settled for a position at Harvard—just in time to avoid the Nazi takeover (Ch.6). There, he ignored the fact that his students called him "Schumpy" behind his back, and he attempted (unsuccessfully) to attract graduate students to his seminars in mathematical economics. (Undergraduates were beneath his notice, and he wondered aloud whether they were really necessary.) Meanwhile, he worked tirelessly on his enormous two-volume book on business cycles, which was poorly received. His follow-up, a little popular book called Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, was quite well received and is now considered his masterpiece, although he thought it far less serious and consequential than Business Cycles.
"Schumpeter was the only economist of any stature in the United States who took Marxism seriously," Swedberg adds, and his project was similar to Marx's: both understood economic evolution as a process generated by the economic system (p.153). Schumpeter's approach, of course, was Weberian: it understood that the economy and social structure could influence each other (p.155). Although Schumpeter respected Marx as a sociologist, however, he noted several problems with Marx's economics: the labor theory of value was "dead and buried." He took a similarly dim view of Marx's doctrine of surplus value. Marx had no theory of business cycles. Yet he appreciated Marx's achievement in "developing a purely economic theory of change" (p.155).
There is much more in this book on Schumpeter's upbringing and values, his achievements and failures, and of course his adventures as a horseman and a lover. If you're interested in this fascinating economist, I encourage you to read the biography.
Reading :: The Culture of Entrepreneurship
The Culture of Entrepreneurship
Edited by Brigitte Berger
This collection is the product of a 1990 conference by the same name, supported by the Institute for the Study of Economic Culture. It "explores the cultural dimensions of modern entrepreneurship" through contributions by "economists, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, and management experts" (p.1). Let's dip into two of these contributions.
In Ch.3, "The discovery and interpretation of profit opportunities: Culture and the Kirznerian entrepreneur," Don Lavoie argues that we need a theory of entrepreneurship that "should help us identify the conditions—economic, political, legal, and cultural—that enhance decentralized developmental processes" (p.33). Unfortunately, on the one hand, entrepreneurship is typically treated in terms of individual psychology, not culture (p.34); on the other hand, anthropologists understand culture, but have focused on "statics rather than dynamics" (p.35). "In other words, the study of the relationship between culture and entrepreneurship demands working with both meaning and economic change, whereas the way disciplinary divisions have evolved, few researchers are capable of handling both categories together" (p.35). Similarly, Lavoie argues, "economists have failed to leave room for meaning and have not done well with change either"—especially the radical change that is associated with entrepreneurship (p.35).
Lavoie argues that "culture has everything to do with" the entrepreneurship process; entrepreneurship "fundamentally consists in interpreting and influencing culture" (p.36). So: what are some of the main elements needed by a theory of entrepreneurship as a cultural process? Lavoie identifies two underdefined terms: "discovery" (that is, radical change; "genuine novelty and creativity") and "interpretation" (that is, finding opportunities via "a discerning of the intersubjective meaning of a qualitative situation") (p.36). In sum, "What is needed is a theory of entrepreneurial change that makes it intelligible without reducing it to a predetermined mechanism" (p.37).
The Austrian school (von Mises, Hayek), Lavoie argues, has come the closest to such a theory (p.37). And of these, Lavoie recommends Israel Kirzner most highly (p.37). Kirzner argued that it was a mistake to treat entrepreneurship like any other scarce resource; rather, he suggested that we should consider "entrepreneurial alertness," in which the entrepreneur has deployed a "choice framework" or "conditions in which the decentralized, entrepreneurial process can be expected to flourish" (p.40).
Yet, Lavoie argues, Kirzner still sees entrepreneurial alertness as raw discovery of what's already there; Lavoie argues instead that opportunities are interpreted (p.44). After discussing von Mises and Hayek, Lavoie proposes to build a theory of entrepreneurship instead on Gadamer.
In Chapter 10, "The rocky road: Entrepreneurship in the Soviet Union, 1986-1989," Walter D. Connor discusses the then-new market liberalization in the USSR. (As he notes at the end of the chapter, between the time he wrote it and the time the book was published, the USSR began the crisis that would lead to its collapse.) Connor notes that "the last time a high level of private enterprise was tolerated in the Soviet Union" had been during "Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP) of 1921-1928" (p.198), which was ended by Stalin shortly after Lenin gave up the ghost. To the Soviets of the mid-80s, "the 'NEPmen' were exploiters and speculators who unjustly enriched themselves and were thus justly banned as the country embarked on the 'building of socialism' under Stalin" (p.198). The intervening years, especially under Brezhnev,
According to Connor, "the Eastern Orthodox moral and ethical tradition," which did not emphasize individual conscience, also played its part. "Methodical work, well done, as its own reward—in a sense, the Protestant ethic—did not figure so prominently in this culture as in others farther west"; thus "few, under such a regime, could develop the internal controls that are so essential to the entrepreneur's organization of effort" (p.203).
In the final two pages, Connor notes the Soviet crisis, which would eventually lead to its collapse. "The people of the USSR ... are living in a period of uncertain transition" (p.209).
Although the other chapters are worthwhile, I found these two to be the most interesting. If you're interested in understanding entrepreneurship from a cultural perspective, take a look.
Edited by Brigitte Berger
This collection is the product of a 1990 conference by the same name, supported by the Institute for the Study of Economic Culture. It "explores the cultural dimensions of modern entrepreneurship" through contributions by "economists, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, and management experts" (p.1). Let's dip into two of these contributions.
In Ch.3, "The discovery and interpretation of profit opportunities: Culture and the Kirznerian entrepreneur," Don Lavoie argues that we need a theory of entrepreneurship that "should help us identify the conditions—economic, political, legal, and cultural—that enhance decentralized developmental processes" (p.33). Unfortunately, on the one hand, entrepreneurship is typically treated in terms of individual psychology, not culture (p.34); on the other hand, anthropologists understand culture, but have focused on "statics rather than dynamics" (p.35). "In other words, the study of the relationship between culture and entrepreneurship demands working with both meaning and economic change, whereas the way disciplinary divisions have evolved, few researchers are capable of handling both categories together" (p.35). Similarly, Lavoie argues, "economists have failed to leave room for meaning and have not done well with change either"—especially the radical change that is associated with entrepreneurship (p.35).
Lavoie argues that "culture has everything to do with" the entrepreneurship process; entrepreneurship "fundamentally consists in interpreting and influencing culture" (p.36). So: what are some of the main elements needed by a theory of entrepreneurship as a cultural process? Lavoie identifies two underdefined terms: "discovery" (that is, radical change; "genuine novelty and creativity") and "interpretation" (that is, finding opportunities via "a discerning of the intersubjective meaning of a qualitative situation") (p.36). In sum, "What is needed is a theory of entrepreneurial change that makes it intelligible without reducing it to a predetermined mechanism" (p.37).
The Austrian school (von Mises, Hayek), Lavoie argues, has come the closest to such a theory (p.37). And of these, Lavoie recommends Israel Kirzner most highly (p.37). Kirzner argued that it was a mistake to treat entrepreneurship like any other scarce resource; rather, he suggested that we should consider "entrepreneurial alertness," in which the entrepreneur has deployed a "choice framework" or "conditions in which the decentralized, entrepreneurial process can be expected to flourish" (p.40).
Yet, Lavoie argues, Kirzner still sees entrepreneurial alertness as raw discovery of what's already there; Lavoie argues instead that opportunities are interpreted (p.44). After discussing von Mises and Hayek, Lavoie proposes to build a theory of entrepreneurship instead on Gadamer.
In Chapter 10, "The rocky road: Entrepreneurship in the Soviet Union, 1986-1989," Walter D. Connor discusses the then-new market liberalization in the USSR. (As he notes at the end of the chapter, between the time he wrote it and the time the book was published, the USSR began the crisis that would lead to its collapse.) Connor notes that "the last time a high level of private enterprise was tolerated in the Soviet Union" had been during "Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP) of 1921-1928" (p.198), which was ended by Stalin shortly after Lenin gave up the ghost. To the Soviets of the mid-80s, "the 'NEPmen' were exploiters and speculators who unjustly enriched themselves and were thus justly banned as the country embarked on the 'building of socialism' under Stalin" (p.198). The intervening years, especially under Brezhnev,
produced in most of the Soviet population a mind-set, which in two senses has complicated perestroika and the place of cooperative entrepreneurship within it. The first evokes a rather deep, if general, egalitarian reaction, intolerant of people within one's range of vision doing significantly better than oneself. The second reflects an incomprehension of the market, the dynamics of supply and demand, and how these will naturally—in the absence of state control or intervention—play out. (p.199)When Gorbachev liberalized the economy, workers, who were disconnected from the market, did not understand entrepreneurship and saw it as utterly unfair. Why could someone who made bra fasteners make 100 rubles in a day, when a tractor driver with a broken tractor could only make 2-3 rubles a day? The tractor driver, Connor adds, was paid by the furrow, not for producing something demanded by others. But he expected recompense for the effort, not the usefulness of his products (p.199). This system encouraged both dependence and sloppy work (p.200). It also encouraged envy. One sociologist interviewed a woman who disapproved of her neighbor, who sold spring vegetables on the side; the woman said, "'I don't want to live like her; I want her to live like me'" (p.201).
According to Connor, "the Eastern Orthodox moral and ethical tradition," which did not emphasize individual conscience, also played its part. "Methodical work, well done, as its own reward—in a sense, the Protestant ethic—did not figure so prominently in this culture as in others farther west"; thus "few, under such a regime, could develop the internal controls that are so essential to the entrepreneur's organization of effort" (p.203).
In the final two pages, Connor notes the Soviet crisis, which would eventually lead to its collapse. "The people of the USSR ... are living in a period of uncertain transition" (p.209).
Although the other chapters are worthwhile, I found these two to be the most interesting. If you're interested in understanding entrepreneurship from a cultural perspective, take a look.
Tuesday, September 22, 2015
Reading :: The Wealth of Nations
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
By Adam Smith
The above link is (perhaps ironically) to the free Kindle version of Adam Smith's classic. Unfortunately, Smith can't catch a break. Marx ridiculed him for his comparatively thin insights. Schumpeter did the same. If he can't get respect from the socialists or the capitalists, where is he going to get it?
But of course being cited itself is a form of respect. And anyone who seeks to understand capitalism eventually has to cite Adam Smith, whose 1776 treatise systematically examined the market economy in Industrial England. Smith systematically examines the division of labor in industrial work ("not originally the effect of any human wisdom"); legitimizes the motive of gain as driving the economy ("We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love"); recognizes the market as a self-organizing system; takes labor as "the only universal, as well as the only accurate, measure of value" (cf. Marx); and describes the law of supply and demand. He argues that the division of labor is a hallmark of developed societies and less known in primitive ones (cf. Engels but also Durkheim). He theorizes wealth and the role of governments in developing it, including the impact of taxes. And he backs up his points with extensive (and sometimes mind-numbing) statistics.
This is a short review because (a) I'm not an economist and (b) I've read and reviewed authors who responded to Smith's ideas. But that doesn't mean this is an unimportant book—it's enormously influential and well worth reading. Or at least skimming.
By Adam Smith
The above link is (perhaps ironically) to the free Kindle version of Adam Smith's classic. Unfortunately, Smith can't catch a break. Marx ridiculed him for his comparatively thin insights. Schumpeter did the same. If he can't get respect from the socialists or the capitalists, where is he going to get it?
But of course being cited itself is a form of respect. And anyone who seeks to understand capitalism eventually has to cite Adam Smith, whose 1776 treatise systematically examined the market economy in Industrial England. Smith systematically examines the division of labor in industrial work ("not originally the effect of any human wisdom"); legitimizes the motive of gain as driving the economy ("We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love"); recognizes the market as a self-organizing system; takes labor as "the only universal, as well as the only accurate, measure of value" (cf. Marx); and describes the law of supply and demand. He argues that the division of labor is a hallmark of developed societies and less known in primitive ones (cf. Engels but also Durkheim). He theorizes wealth and the role of governments in developing it, including the impact of taxes. And he backs up his points with extensive (and sometimes mind-numbing) statistics.
This is a short review because (a) I'm not an economist and (b) I've read and reviewed authors who responded to Smith's ideas. But that doesn't mean this is an unimportant book—it's enormously influential and well worth reading. Or at least skimming.
Reading :: Anti-Duehring
Anti-Duehring
By Friedrich Engels
The link above goes (again) to the Kindle collection of works by Marx & Engels. But you can easily find Anti-Duehring by itself in both Kindle and print (sometimes listed as Anti-Dühring). This famous book, first published in 1878, is meant as a response to "Dr. Eugene Duehring, privat docent at Berlin University" (see translator's introduction), who publicly announced that he had "converted" to socialism but described a socialism different from Marx and Engels' vision. But Anti-Duehring has also been described as Engels' major work on Marxist theory. It was deeply influential to the young A.R. Luria as he developed his ideas of a Marxist psychology. Its last chapter was republished with some modifications as the pamphlet Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.
It's also hard to read. Not because it is especially challenging material—Engels didn't write especially challenging books, in my opinion—but because the tone is unrelentingly polemic and sarcastic. It's like reading a YouTube comments section.
It has often crossed my mind that the sneering, sniping style Engels uses here became the model for Lenin, who passed it on to Ilyenkov. (Stalin's style was less sneering and more autocratic, perhaps reflecting the two men's different political positions at the time they wrote their books.) I tend to read performative contempt as a compensation for weakness, so I had trouble evaluating the argument on its merits.
The argument itself, though, expands dialectic by applying it to the natural world and making it a natural law, just as Dialectics of Nature did. Engels argues, as Ilyenkov later did, that contradictions seem impossible in traditional logic because traditional logic doesn't take change into account (Ch.7): "motion is just the continuous establishing and dissolving the contradiction" [sic]. It is this argument, more fully developed in Dialectics of Nature, and the companion argument that religion will die a natural death, more fully developed in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, that make Anti-Duehring an important book. But those other books spare you the constant invective. I suggest reading them first.
By Friedrich Engels
The link above goes (again) to the Kindle collection of works by Marx & Engels. But you can easily find Anti-Duehring by itself in both Kindle and print (sometimes listed as Anti-Dühring). This famous book, first published in 1878, is meant as a response to "Dr. Eugene Duehring, privat docent at Berlin University" (see translator's introduction), who publicly announced that he had "converted" to socialism but described a socialism different from Marx and Engels' vision. But Anti-Duehring has also been described as Engels' major work on Marxist theory. It was deeply influential to the young A.R. Luria as he developed his ideas of a Marxist psychology. Its last chapter was republished with some modifications as the pamphlet Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.
It's also hard to read. Not because it is especially challenging material—Engels didn't write especially challenging books, in my opinion—but because the tone is unrelentingly polemic and sarcastic. It's like reading a YouTube comments section.
It has often crossed my mind that the sneering, sniping style Engels uses here became the model for Lenin, who passed it on to Ilyenkov. (Stalin's style was less sneering and more autocratic, perhaps reflecting the two men's different political positions at the time they wrote their books.) I tend to read performative contempt as a compensation for weakness, so I had trouble evaluating the argument on its merits.
The argument itself, though, expands dialectic by applying it to the natural world and making it a natural law, just as Dialectics of Nature did. Engels argues, as Ilyenkov later did, that contradictions seem impossible in traditional logic because traditional logic doesn't take change into account (Ch.7): "motion is just the continuous establishing and dissolving the contradiction" [sic]. It is this argument, more fully developed in Dialectics of Nature, and the companion argument that religion will die a natural death, more fully developed in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, that make Anti-Duehring an important book. But those other books spare you the constant invective. I suggest reading them first.
Sunday, September 20, 2015
(failure is like poison)
Here's something I told my class the other day.
People don't like failure. They see it as a bad thing. And it can be. It can be terrible. If you let it.
I think of failure as similar to ingesting poison. On the face of it, it seems like a catastrophically bad idea. And we desperately want to avoid it. Who in their right mind would willingly drink poison?
But, honestly, many of us do choose to drink poison. Alcohol is quite literally a poison. But many of us choose to drink it, and some even pay a great deal of money for the privilege. The important principle is not to drink too much of it.
Let's extend this analogy a bit. Let's suppose you buy a big bottle of vodka (I'm not advocating this, but for the sake of discussion, suppose you do this.) It's late September. You decide that by the end of the year, you're going to have finished the bottle.
You can handle this in at least two ways.
One way is to take a shot or two every evening. A shot or two of this poison won't do much—it may warm you up, make you a little more relaxed and euphoric. It may actually help you in a social situation such as a party or karaoke. You probably won't even have a hangover the next day.
Another way is to wait until New Year's Eve—and drink the entire bottle. That will be a less pleasant experience, and you may not even survive it.
The first way represents small, recoverable errors. Low-stakes failures from which you have plenty of chance to recover.
The second way represents a big, single point of failure. It's high-stakes, and you may have no way to recover from it.
Now apply this to the things you need to do. If you're a student, that may mean drafting papers and projects. If you're an academic, that may mean publishing so you can get tenure. If you're an entrepreneur, it may mean developing your idea so it can find buyers.
In any of these cases, you should build in multiple points at which you can make small errors: low-stakes failures from which you have plenty of chance to recover. Take a couple of small shots every day. You might even look forward to these small failures, and they may make you feel more relaxed, euphoric, and sociable. Each small failure gives you feedback and helps you to better understand a path to success.
The fewer points of failure you have, the larger the dose of poison is, and the harder it will be to recover from it. And if you wait until the very end—you write the paper the night before it's due, you keep putting finishing touches on that journal article, you wait until your innovation is perfect before you share it with the world—then you're looking at a high-stakes situation with a high potential for failure and no margin to recover.
So: Get out there, fail early and often, but in small ways. Understand each failure as a piece of feedback that can help you succeed. Seek criticism and use it to strengthen what you do.
And that is what people mean when they say "fail faster."
People don't like failure. They see it as a bad thing. And it can be. It can be terrible. If you let it.
I think of failure as similar to ingesting poison. On the face of it, it seems like a catastrophically bad idea. And we desperately want to avoid it. Who in their right mind would willingly drink poison?
But, honestly, many of us do choose to drink poison. Alcohol is quite literally a poison. But many of us choose to drink it, and some even pay a great deal of money for the privilege. The important principle is not to drink too much of it.
Let's extend this analogy a bit. Let's suppose you buy a big bottle of vodka (I'm not advocating this, but for the sake of discussion, suppose you do this.) It's late September. You decide that by the end of the year, you're going to have finished the bottle.
You can handle this in at least two ways.
One way is to take a shot or two every evening. A shot or two of this poison won't do much—it may warm you up, make you a little more relaxed and euphoric. It may actually help you in a social situation such as a party or karaoke. You probably won't even have a hangover the next day.
Another way is to wait until New Year's Eve—and drink the entire bottle. That will be a less pleasant experience, and you may not even survive it.
The first way represents small, recoverable errors. Low-stakes failures from which you have plenty of chance to recover.
The second way represents a big, single point of failure. It's high-stakes, and you may have no way to recover from it.
Now apply this to the things you need to do. If you're a student, that may mean drafting papers and projects. If you're an academic, that may mean publishing so you can get tenure. If you're an entrepreneur, it may mean developing your idea so it can find buyers.
In any of these cases, you should build in multiple points at which you can make small errors: low-stakes failures from which you have plenty of chance to recover. Take a couple of small shots every day. You might even look forward to these small failures, and they may make you feel more relaxed, euphoric, and sociable. Each small failure gives you feedback and helps you to better understand a path to success.
The fewer points of failure you have, the larger the dose of poison is, and the harder it will be to recover from it. And if you wait until the very end—you write the paper the night before it's due, you keep putting finishing touches on that journal article, you wait until your innovation is perfect before you share it with the world—then you're looking at a high-stakes situation with a high potential for failure and no margin to recover.
So: Get out there, fail early and often, but in small ways. Understand each failure as a piece of feedback that can help you succeed. Seek criticism and use it to strengthen what you do.
And that is what people mean when they say "fail faster."
(perfectionists and pragmatists)
Here's something I told my class a couple of weeks ago.
Here are two strategies for getting things done: perfectionism and pragmatism.
Perfectionism involves trying to make things perfect. Pragmatism involves trying to make things good enough.
Perfectionists tend to thrive when approaching a project with specific, clearly measurable criteria, a well-defined timeline, and a clearly defined end state. They have to know what and where the target is so that they can hit it. They look for clear rules and play by those rules. And they get upset if rules, timelines, or criteria change.
Perfectionists thus tend to do pretty well during the first couple of years of college, which involve these sorts of well-defined projects. In fact, they tend to hold instructors to what they have said when assigning these projects. That is, they try to control circumstances so that the strategy works. No moving targets.
Unfortunately, perfectionism is a brittle strategy. Because it relies on an unchanging end state and criteria—that is, an unmoving target—it is not a good strategy to apply to ill-defined, emergent problems with unclear timelines and open possibilities; complex interdisciplinary problems; problems that require tradeoffs and compromises; problems with undefined end states; problems that are not amenable to control.
These problems are the ones we tend to encounter in advanced studies, say, in the second couple of years of college. They are also the kinds of problems we encounter in collaborative work, in entrepreneurial work, and in work that involves discovery. That is, these problems characterize knowledge work, as I discuss in detail in All Edge.
Those problems are more tractable to a second strategy: pragmatism.
Pragmatism is a resilient strategy. It recognizes that some problems—perhaps most problems—have no perfect solution. Instead, pragmatism aims at solutions that are good enough, solutions that satisfy (or satisfice) a number of different stakeholders. In a pragmatic view, the target is not out there, already defined; part of the project involves making the target and tracking it as it moves, changes nature, changes in scope.
Since perfectionism works so well in the first couple of years of college, it's easy for students to think of it as the correct strategy. It's easy for them to begin thinking that there's an underlying social contract that all tasks should be clearly defined, and if they aren't, someone is being a bad actor. But since most problems are not like that, and since the assumed social contract doesn't actually exist beyond the walls of defined hierarchies, this strategy tends to fail—and sometimes fail spectacularly.
Pragmatism, on the other hand, often looks like slacking or halfheartedness during the first two years of college. Its value is often not seen until later, when students desperately need that strategy to make real contributions, ones that involve creativity, emergence, and multiple stakeholders.
We need to make the benefits of pragmatism plainer, and we need to teach the tools and practices that make pragmatism work. Doing so will help people—especially our college graduates—become well equipped to realize those benefits. Perfectionism is maladapted for an all-edge, networked world; pragmatism is the essence of that world.
Here are two strategies for getting things done: perfectionism and pragmatism.
Perfectionism involves trying to make things perfect. Pragmatism involves trying to make things good enough.
Perfectionists tend to thrive when approaching a project with specific, clearly measurable criteria, a well-defined timeline, and a clearly defined end state. They have to know what and where the target is so that they can hit it. They look for clear rules and play by those rules. And they get upset if rules, timelines, or criteria change.
Perfectionists thus tend to do pretty well during the first couple of years of college, which involve these sorts of well-defined projects. In fact, they tend to hold instructors to what they have said when assigning these projects. That is, they try to control circumstances so that the strategy works. No moving targets.
Unfortunately, perfectionism is a brittle strategy. Because it relies on an unchanging end state and criteria—that is, an unmoving target—it is not a good strategy to apply to ill-defined, emergent problems with unclear timelines and open possibilities; complex interdisciplinary problems; problems that require tradeoffs and compromises; problems with undefined end states; problems that are not amenable to control.
These problems are the ones we tend to encounter in advanced studies, say, in the second couple of years of college. They are also the kinds of problems we encounter in collaborative work, in entrepreneurial work, and in work that involves discovery. That is, these problems characterize knowledge work, as I discuss in detail in All Edge.
Those problems are more tractable to a second strategy: pragmatism.
Pragmatism is a resilient strategy. It recognizes that some problems—perhaps most problems—have no perfect solution. Instead, pragmatism aims at solutions that are good enough, solutions that satisfy (or satisfice) a number of different stakeholders. In a pragmatic view, the target is not out there, already defined; part of the project involves making the target and tracking it as it moves, changes nature, changes in scope.
Since perfectionism works so well in the first couple of years of college, it's easy for students to think of it as the correct strategy. It's easy for them to begin thinking that there's an underlying social contract that all tasks should be clearly defined, and if they aren't, someone is being a bad actor. But since most problems are not like that, and since the assumed social contract doesn't actually exist beyond the walls of defined hierarchies, this strategy tends to fail—and sometimes fail spectacularly.
Pragmatism, on the other hand, often looks like slacking or halfheartedness during the first two years of college. Its value is often not seen until later, when students desperately need that strategy to make real contributions, ones that involve creativity, emergence, and multiple stakeholders.
We need to make the benefits of pragmatism plainer, and we need to teach the tools and practices that make pragmatism work. Doing so will help people—especially our college graduates—become well equipped to realize those benefits. Perfectionism is maladapted for an all-edge, networked world; pragmatism is the essence of that world.
Thursday, September 03, 2015
iConference 2016: Final Call for Papers
If you haven't done so already, consider attending iConference 2016. CFP is below:
iConference 2016 papers are due Wednesday, September 9, at 11:59 pm Eastern Daylight Time. All authors are encouraged to begin finalizing their submissions.
2016 Submission TimelinePapersDue Wednesday, September 9, 2015, 11:59 EDT
WorkshopsDue Monday, September 28, 2015, 11:59 EDT
Doctoral ColloquiumDue Monday, September 28, 2015, 11:59 EDT
PostersDue Monday, October 5, 2015, 11:59 EDT
Sessions for Interaction and EngagementDue Monday, October 5, 2015, 11:59 EDT
Dissertation AwardDue Monday, October 12, 2015, 23:59 GMT
iConference 2016 takes place March 20-23, 2016, in historic Philadelphia, PA, USA. This year’s theme of “Partnership with Society” examines the dynamic, evolving role of information science and today’s iSchool movement, and the benefits to society. iConference 2016 is hosted by Drexel University’s College of Computing & Informatics and presented by the iSchools organization (www.ischools.org)
All information scholars and professionals are invited to make submissions. Authors and conference participants do not need to be affiliated with an iSchool. All are welcome.
IMPORTANT LINKSConference Home: http://ischools.org/the-iconference/Call for Participation: http://ischools.org/the-iconference/call-for-participation/Submissions: https://www.conftool.com/iConference2016/Facebook: iConferenceTwitter: @iConf | #iconf16
Tuesday, September 01, 2015
Reading :: Researching Entrepreneurship
Researching Entrepreneurship
By Per Davidsson
This research text is a little quirky. In fact, I have noticed that a lot of research methodology texts are. Compare John Law's After Method, Creswell's Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design, Becker's Tricks of the Trade, van Maanen's Tales of the Field, and of course my own Topsight. All are a little self-deprecating, all tell stories about learning to be a researcher, and all emphasize the role of argumentation in putting together a good research report. Maybe these genre characteristics are due to the relatively small audience or the fact that research methodology texts are built so deeply on the experience of the author.
In any case, Davidsson's text is a solid example of the genre—starting with his dedication: "I will stick to my habit of not dedicating this book to someone I love, because I think it an odd practice to 'give' to people what does not interest them" (p.xii). He still of course manages to thank his family.
Davidsson is interested in the study of entrepreneurship, which is a much discussed topic in management and economics (and, to a lesser degree, in sociology), but has over the last couple of decades begun to emerge as an interdisciplinary field of research in its own right. In the first chapter, he reviews various definitions of entrepreneurship as a phenomenon before settling on one: "I propose that a fruitful way to define entrepreneurship is the notion in Austrian economics that entrepreneurship consists of the competitive behaviors that drive the market process (Kirzner, 1973, pp.19-20). ... I favor the definition because it is succinct and gives a satisfactorily clear delineation of the role of entrepreneurship in society" (p.6). And "entrepreneurship according to the suggested perspective consists of the introduction of new economic activity that leads to change in the marketplace" (p.8).
Whereas in Chapter 1 he discusses entrepreneurship as a phenomenon to be studied, in Chapter 2, Davidsson discusses entrepreneurship as a research domain. Entrepreneurship as a phenomenon can only be detected post hoc, so making the phenomenon equal to the research domain would yield only retrospective research; treating entrepreneurship as a research domain in its own right opens the door to study entrepreneurial practices as they happen (p.17). It also means that one can include theoretical questions as well as empirical ones (pp.17-18). He argues that the research domain of entrepreneurship should include behavior, process, emergence (including that of new market offerings and induced processes of emergence), discovery, exploitation (including modes of exploitation), heterogeneity, and uncertainty, as well as failure (p.21). Re discovery, he adds that the term should not imply that an opportunity is "out there," waiting to be discovered; discovery is a process (p.24).
In Ch.3, he argues that before applying existing theory to entrepreneurship, we should ask:
Just as Davidsson wrote only briefly about qualitative research, which was beyond his purview, I'll avoid reviewing the rest of the book because it's on quantitative research, which is beyond my purview. But the first half of the book was immensely useful as I consider new research projects on entrepreneurship. If you're also looking into this research phenomenon (and domain), I encourage you to take a look.
By Per Davidsson
This research text is a little quirky. In fact, I have noticed that a lot of research methodology texts are. Compare John Law's After Method, Creswell's Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design, Becker's Tricks of the Trade, van Maanen's Tales of the Field, and of course my own Topsight. All are a little self-deprecating, all tell stories about learning to be a researcher, and all emphasize the role of argumentation in putting together a good research report. Maybe these genre characteristics are due to the relatively small audience or the fact that research methodology texts are built so deeply on the experience of the author.
In any case, Davidsson's text is a solid example of the genre—starting with his dedication: "I will stick to my habit of not dedicating this book to someone I love, because I think it an odd practice to 'give' to people what does not interest them" (p.xii). He still of course manages to thank his family.
Davidsson is interested in the study of entrepreneurship, which is a much discussed topic in management and economics (and, to a lesser degree, in sociology), but has over the last couple of decades begun to emerge as an interdisciplinary field of research in its own right. In the first chapter, he reviews various definitions of entrepreneurship as a phenomenon before settling on one: "I propose that a fruitful way to define entrepreneurship is the notion in Austrian economics that entrepreneurship consists of the competitive behaviors that drive the market process (Kirzner, 1973, pp.19-20). ... I favor the definition because it is succinct and gives a satisfactorily clear delineation of the role of entrepreneurship in society" (p.6). And "entrepreneurship according to the suggested perspective consists of the introduction of new economic activity that leads to change in the marketplace" (p.8).
Whereas in Chapter 1 he discusses entrepreneurship as a phenomenon to be studied, in Chapter 2, Davidsson discusses entrepreneurship as a research domain. Entrepreneurship as a phenomenon can only be detected post hoc, so making the phenomenon equal to the research domain would yield only retrospective research; treating entrepreneurship as a research domain in its own right opens the door to study entrepreneurial practices as they happen (p.17). It also means that one can include theoretical questions as well as empirical ones (pp.17-18). He argues that the research domain of entrepreneurship should include behavior, process, emergence (including that of new market offerings and induced processes of emergence), discovery, exploitation (including modes of exploitation), heterogeneity, and uncertainty, as well as failure (p.21). Re discovery, he adds that the term should not imply that an opportunity is "out there," waiting to be discovered; discovery is a process (p.24).
In Ch.3, he argues that before applying existing theory to entrepreneurship, we should ask:
- "Does the theory acknowledge uncertainty and heterogeneity?"
- "Can it be applied to the problem of emergence, or does it presuppose the existence of markets, products or organizations in a way that clashes with the research questions?"
- "Does the theory allow a process perspective?"
- "Does it apply to the preferred unit of analysis...?"
- "Is it compatible with an interest in the types of outcomes that are most relevant from an entrepreneurship point of view?" (p.51)
Just as Davidsson wrote only briefly about qualitative research, which was beyond his purview, I'll avoid reviewing the rest of the book because it's on quantitative research, which is beyond my purview. But the first half of the book was immensely useful as I consider new research projects on entrepreneurship. If you're also looking into this research phenomenon (and domain), I encourage you to take a look.
CFP: Special issue of JBTC on the rhetoric of entrepreneurship: Theories, methodologies, and practices
JBTC has just published the call for papers for my special issue.
The link goes to the published CFP in JBTC, which you'll need a subscription to read; if you don't have one, here's a link to the CFP on the open web.
The first step is an easy one: just write an abstract and email it to me by November 30, 2015.
And if you have questions about the topic before you write the abstract, just shoot me an email and I'll give you some feedback and guidance.
Looking forward to seeing what you're proposing!
The link goes to the published CFP in JBTC, which you'll need a subscription to read; if you don't have one, here's a link to the CFP on the open web.
The first step is an easy one: just write an abstract and email it to me by November 30, 2015.
And if you have questions about the topic before you write the abstract, just shoot me an email and I'll give you some feedback and guidance.
Looking forward to seeing what you're proposing!
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Reading :: The Development of Sociology in the Soviet Union
The Development of Sociology in the Soviet Union
By Elizabeth Weinberg
A month or two ago, I accidentally discovered that Stalin banned sociology from the Soviet Union. It was declared a Bourgeois pseudoscience. This fact fascinated me, and I wanted to read the story. Although I read a few articles, I thought that picking up a book on the subject would be a good idea.
This book, from 1974, was written not so long after the 1956 Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union allowed sociology to be taken up again. But why was it banned in the first place? The first two chapters tell us—and I should make clear that they are the only chapters I actually read.
As Weinberg tells it, in the 1920s and 1930s, the disciplines were being progressively refitted to reflect Marxist thought, as if one were refurnishing rooms in a house. "The old idealist furnishings were to become materialist: the new structure was to be based on the Weltanschauung [worldview] of Marxism. ... Marxist sociology was subsequently entrusted with applying the method of dialectical and historical materialism to social relations and with further developing historical materialism. At the same time, it was charged with popularising and propagandising the ideas of historical materialism and with teaching the masses about the construction of socialism" (p.3). This task was set "as early as 1918" when Lenin defined "the programme of the Socialist Academy of the Social Sciences." From Lenin's perspective, social research should involve a short list of subjects, including "1. labour, especially the conditions and organisation of labour and the influence of socio-psychological, educational and general cultural factors on labour production; 2. the economic mode of life and the income(s) of different categories of the population (e.g., the peasants); 3. class relations and questions of the theory of classes," and four others (pp.7-8). Notice how the first one dovetails with Leontiev's reformulation of Soviet psychology around labor activity.
In those early days, some sociologists resisted this program (pp.3-5), attempting to retain idealism. More importantly, sociology was found to be redundant with historical materialism—both studied the "general and particular laws of social development" (p.12). So "Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism took its place" (p.8). By the mid-1930s, even the term "sociology" was banned and "many sociological concepts worked out by Marx, Engels, and Lenin, were no longer used" (p.9). And
Weinberg adds: "It was Marxism, Lenin had said, which had first raised sociology to the level of a science. And the theory of historical materialism was—and is—the Marxist science of society" (p.10).
Even after sociology was again allowed in the Soviet Union, it was based closely on historical materialism and carefully "noncontradictory" (seemingly a common concern in the Soviet social sciences) (p.22). Its "laws and interrelations are objective and determined by material circumstances" (p.23; that is, they were of course firmly Marxist rather than Weberian).
In all, I found the book's first two chapters useful, but I would have liked still more detail. However, if you're interested in this very specific question, take a look.
By Elizabeth Weinberg
A month or two ago, I accidentally discovered that Stalin banned sociology from the Soviet Union. It was declared a Bourgeois pseudoscience. This fact fascinated me, and I wanted to read the story. Although I read a few articles, I thought that picking up a book on the subject would be a good idea.
This book, from 1974, was written not so long after the 1956 Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union allowed sociology to be taken up again. But why was it banned in the first place? The first two chapters tell us—and I should make clear that they are the only chapters I actually read.
As Weinberg tells it, in the 1920s and 1930s, the disciplines were being progressively refitted to reflect Marxist thought, as if one were refurnishing rooms in a house. "The old idealist furnishings were to become materialist: the new structure was to be based on the Weltanschauung [worldview] of Marxism. ... Marxist sociology was subsequently entrusted with applying the method of dialectical and historical materialism to social relations and with further developing historical materialism. At the same time, it was charged with popularising and propagandising the ideas of historical materialism and with teaching the masses about the construction of socialism" (p.3). This task was set "as early as 1918" when Lenin defined "the programme of the Socialist Academy of the Social Sciences." From Lenin's perspective, social research should involve a short list of subjects, including "1. labour, especially the conditions and organisation of labour and the influence of socio-psychological, educational and general cultural factors on labour production; 2. the economic mode of life and the income(s) of different categories of the population (e.g., the peasants); 3. class relations and questions of the theory of classes," and four others (pp.7-8). Notice how the first one dovetails with Leontiev's reformulation of Soviet psychology around labor activity.
In those early days, some sociologists resisted this program (pp.3-5), attempting to retain idealism. More importantly, sociology was found to be redundant with historical materialism—both studied the "general and particular laws of social development" (p.12). So "Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism took its place" (p.8). By the mid-1930s, even the term "sociology" was banned and "many sociological concepts worked out by Marx, Engels, and Lenin, were no longer used" (p.9). And
Only the social terminology and those social concepts to be found in the works of Stalin were recognised. The basis of sociological and philosophical commentaries became the chapter entitled 'Dialectical and Historical Materialism' in [Stalin's] History of the CPSU(B): Short Course, 1938. (p.9)The sociological research carried out in those years were carried out in other disciplines: ethnography, anthropology (p.9).
Weinberg adds: "It was Marxism, Lenin had said, which had first raised sociology to the level of a science. And the theory of historical materialism was—and is—the Marxist science of society" (p.10).
Even after sociology was again allowed in the Soviet Union, it was based closely on historical materialism and carefully "noncontradictory" (seemingly a common concern in the Soviet social sciences) (p.22). Its "laws and interrelations are objective and determined by material circumstances" (p.23; that is, they were of course firmly Marxist rather than Weberian).
In all, I found the book's first two chapters useful, but I would have liked still more detail. However, if you're interested in this very specific question, take a look.
Reading :: One is Not Born a Personality
One Is Not Born a Personality: Profiles of Soviet Education Psychologists
By K. Levitin
I ran into citations of this book recently when reading books on Vygotsky's life, and the quoted material looked interesting enough for me to pick up. At the time I began looking for it, I couldn't seem to find it on Amazon, but got the 1982 Progress Publishers version through interlibrary loan (thanks to our friends at Texas A&M). But it turns out that another publisher reprinted it in 2011 (link above), so you can get a copy if you want. I'm thinking about ordering it myself.
Not that I am necessarily endorsing the book. Levitin was a Soviet journalist, and even though the Soviet Union in 1982 was more open than it was during the Stalinist years, the material is still pretty carefully curated. Here's one egregious example:
Leontiev begins the interview by taking a swipe at American psychology, which (he says) accumulates facts but has not developed the theoretical and methodological foundations to interpret them (p.111). "Soviet psychology has rejected the path of methodological pluralism of which Western psychology is so proud. I think this is false pride, because the old adage, 'many approaches mean no approach' has a lot of truth to it" (p.112).
Leontiev recounts the history of Soviet psychology. Of interest to us is his characterization of Georgy Chelpanov, who headed the Institute of Experimental Psychology at Moscow University before the Revolution and stayed on afterwards. Chelpanov was "a convinced idealist who tried to 'tame' experimental psychology (which was developing vigorously at the time), to keep it from going materialist" (p.113). Leontiev claims that this commitment led to unimpressive results (p.113); Chelpanov's institute was "backward in the main" (p.114). "But it was in the bosom of that Institute that a movement to revolutionise psychology began. It was headed by one of Chelpanov's associates, Konstantin Kornilov." The investigation that began this revolution "was, in general, a rather ordinary investigation, but the author considered it the beginning of a new psychological trend—reactology" (p.115). Reactology attempted to eliminate idealism from psychology and thus be Marxist. Chelpanov tried to defend himself, at first by declaring "that Marxism was dogma for which psychology had no use, but by the end of 1923 he had begun to assert that Marxism in psychology was precisely what his Institute was seeking" (p.115). By the end of 1923, he was replaced as director by Kornilov and the Institute was tasked with developing a Marxist psychology (p.116).
Thus 1924 began with a search for new Marxist talent as well as new directions. "For all the diversity of these early searches, which might have given the impression of incoherence"—recall that he had just criticized the methodological pluralism of American psychology—"there was something all the team members had in common," which was the need for a psychology based in Marxism.
He then turns to the characteristics of activity theory, which is based on the person's (labor) activity rather than consumption:
Luria almost immediately realized differences with Kornilov (p.155). He was interested in psychoanalysis and wanted to create an "objective" psychoanalysis, so he exchanged the Kornilov dynamometer with a Yermakov apparatus, which a subject pressed while thinking of an association for a word supplied by the researcher. Luria recorded the latent time between the time he provided a word and time the subject provided the association (p.155). After searching for situations with high affective content, Luria came up with the idea of running this experiment on students who were about to face the expulsion board, slipping in words such as "expulsion." He and Leontiev did this work together and wrote a paper on it (p.156). Later, he tried a variant on criminal suspects, finding a correlation between reactions and convictions (pp.157-158)—that is, he invented the lie detector.
Luria said that he divided his career into two phases: before and after meeting Vygotsky (p.159). "The most exciting years of the century and of my own life were the twenties—those associated with Vygotsky. I can hardly claim any credit for what I've done. It all comes from Vygotsky, and this is true not only of myself but of many others, only some admit it and some don't" (p.164). He doesn't name names.
Levitin recounts: "Three people—Vygotsky, Leontiev and Luria—set out to 'develop the basic units of content for psychology'" (p.162).
The chapter on Mescharov was not as interesting to me, but I pull this quote attributed to Vygotsky, which ties his focus on word meaning to labor:
By K. Levitin
I ran into citations of this book recently when reading books on Vygotsky's life, and the quoted material looked interesting enough for me to pick up. At the time I began looking for it, I couldn't seem to find it on Amazon, but got the 1982 Progress Publishers version through interlibrary loan (thanks to our friends at Texas A&M). But it turns out that another publisher reprinted it in 2011 (link above), so you can get a copy if you want. I'm thinking about ordering it myself.
Not that I am necessarily endorsing the book. Levitin was a Soviet journalist, and even though the Soviet Union in 1982 was more open than it was during the Stalinist years, the material is still pretty carefully curated. Here's one egregious example:
The long scientific career of Alexander Luria was ruled by some inner logic that led him to freely chose [sic] his own paths. Otherwise what could have led him, a professor at an institute of education to take up graduate studies at a medical institute and, upon completing them to work for many years with Burdenko as an intern at the Institute of Neurosurgery and defend another Candidate's and a second Doctoral dissertation, this time in medicine. If Luria had not decided to follow a regular medical career from struggling intern to a distinguished professor, and if that path had not merged with a similar path in the field of psychology, the odds are that the two wonderful books would never have appeared and the conflict between the opposing branches of psychology would still be unresolved. (p.201)
What indeed? Levitin could have pointed us to Michael Cole's afterword to Luria's biography—which he quotes elsewhere—for the obvious explanation: Luria was exercising his well-honed instincts for staying out of trouble as he navigated the treacherous landscape of the Soviet Union during the Stalin years. But this straightforward explanation would have been unpublishable. So Levitin erases it and chalks it up to "some inner logic."
Still, the book has plenty of good material that one cannot find elsewhere. Levitin's chapters each profile a prominent Soviet psychologist: Vygotsky (Ch.1), Leontiev (Ch.2), Luria (Ch.3), Meshcheryakov (Ch.4), and Vasili Davydov (Ch.5). V.V. Davydov is credited as the editor, while Vladimir Zinchenko provides the preface. The material is journalistic, relying heavily on interviews with the principals or with those who remember them.
Let's start with the preface. Zinchenko tells us, "My main object in writing this preface is to attest to the truth of everything written in this book"—something he can say confidently because he grew up in the midst of the Kharkov Circle (his father was a member), and later learned psychology from many of the principals in Moscow (p.8). Of these principals, he recalls, "They were genuine patriots" and "They were eager to lay the foundations of a Marxist psychology"; "They were all anxious to make their contributions to the great transformations taking place in the Soviet state, and they succeeded" (p.9).
Zinchenko adds that "The psychological theory of activity is the achievement of the whole of Soviet psychological science. Vygotsky's school shares the credit for it with some other psychological trends. Ananiev, Basov, Rubinstein, Smirnov, Teplov, Uznadze, and others come to mind, but Rubinstein's contribution was by far the most important" (p.11). (Alas, I have not read Rubinstein, and he has been undercited in the CHAT literature I've read; I'll have to pick him up soon.)
Zinchenko also adds, "Psychologists have yet to master the scientific legacy of Mikhail Bakhtin, Paul Valeri, Alexei Losev and many others" (p.9). Bakhtin, of course, had been rediscovered at this point. There was no question about integrating his works into Soviet psychology in the Stalinist years. He would later be integrated into Engestromian activity theory, a move that I think is still causing problems due to the tension between dialectical materialism and dialogism. But more about that elsewhere.
In Chapter 1, Levitin recounts how Vygotsky received his law degree at the University of Shanyavsky, then returned to his hometown of Gomel to teach literature and psychology. At this time, he also "organised a psychology laboratory at the Gomel Teacher's College. There he delivered a course of lectures which later became a book called Educational Psychology" (p.18). His work had already begun even before he went to Moscow in 1924 (p.18).
Levitin quotes frequently here from Stephen Toulmin's overview of Vygotsky (in his 1978 article for the New York Review of Books, entitled "The Mozart of Psychology"). But he also draws from an interview he conducted from Semyon Dobkin, Vygotsky's childhood friend. Dobkin reported that Vygotsky was always interested in philosophical questions, led discussion circles as a teen, and had assimilated Hegel by 15 (p.26). Inspired by his cousin David Vygodsky, he got into Esperanto and stamp collecting (p.27).
At the end of the chapter, Levitin sets up an imaginary dialogue about Vygotsky's legacy among Petrovsky, Jakobsen, Toulmin, Vygotsky, Zinchenko, Schedrovitsky, Yaroshevsky, Cole, Davydov, Wertsch, Luria, and Leontiev. The dialogue is composed by quotes from each author's works and from the author's interviews with them. It was not especially illuminating, but there were some interesting parts. For instance, Levitin quotes Mikhail Yaroshevsky as saying:
Vygotsky viewed Marxist psychology not as a school (like the associationist, experimental, and other schools) but as the only scientific psychology. Unlike those authors who had lost their sense of historicity and demanded psychology "break with the past" and "make a new beginning", Vygotsky believed that transformation of psychology on the basis of Marxism did not in any way mean abandoning all previous work. Every effort of free thought to gain insight into the psyche and every attempt at deterministic investigation were preparing a future psychology and therefore would necessarily be incorporated into it in a modified form. Like the development of a socio-economic formation in Marxist doctrine, so the development of the psyche must be regarded as a natural historical process. Vygotsky's subsequent work demonstrated the fruitfulness of this methodology. (p.53, my emphasis)Quoting James Wertsch:
One can see the influence of two areas of study which gave rise to much of Vygotsky's genius--Marxism and semiotics. Thus, Vygotsky was interested in the role of sign systems as mediating devices, but he viewed this as an extension of Marx's notion of how the tool or instrument mediates labor activity.
For Marx and Engels, labor was the basic form of human activity. It lies at the foundation of any explanation of socio-cultural history and of the psychological characteristics of the individual. Their analysis stressed that in carrying out labor activity humans do not simply transform nature, they are also themselves transformed in the process. For Marx, labor is primarily "... a process going on between man and nature, a process in which man, through his own activity, initiates, regulates, and controls the material reactions between himself and nature. He confronts nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of own body, in order to appropriate nature's productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at same time changes own nature. He develops the powers that slumber within him, and subjects them to his own control". That is, humans do not remain unchanged or unaffected by their participation in labor activity which transforms nature. They are constantly being influenced by this activity and by the demands placed on them as a result of the impact it had had on nature. (p.67; he doesn't document the Marx citation.)In Chapter 2, Levitin turns to Leontiev, relying heavily on an interview that he and Evald Ilyenkov conducted with Leontiev just before Leontiev's death—Leontiev's last interview, he says. In the biography, Levitin recounts that "The main direction of his research emerged after he grew close to Vygotsky in the latter half of the 1920s and along with him and Luria set about developing a theory of the socio-historical origin in the higher, i.e., specifically human, functions" (p.104). He describes how Leontiev "tackled the problem of the origins of the psychic reflection of reality," first in Kharkov and then in Moscow (p.105). During World War II, Leontiev researched ways to restore soldiers' motor functions (p.105). After the War, Leontiev turned to "the motives and laws of psychic development in preschool and school-age children" as well as investigating "the structure of activity, its course under different motivations, and its impact on shaping of the mental processes of the child" (p.106). This work led to Problems of Mental Development (elsewhere translated Problems of the Development of the Mind), which won the Lenin Prize in 1963 (p.106). In 1975 another book, Activity, Consciousness, and Personality, won the Lomonosov Prize in 1975 (p.107). "Leontiev did a great deal to apply Lenin's theory of reflection in concrete psychological studies and to explore the psychological mechanisms that give rise ot the subjective image of the objective world" (p.107).
Leontiev begins the interview by taking a swipe at American psychology, which (he says) accumulates facts but has not developed the theoretical and methodological foundations to interpret them (p.111). "Soviet psychology has rejected the path of methodological pluralism of which Western psychology is so proud. I think this is false pride, because the old adage, 'many approaches mean no approach' has a lot of truth to it" (p.112).
Leontiev recounts the history of Soviet psychology. Of interest to us is his characterization of Georgy Chelpanov, who headed the Institute of Experimental Psychology at Moscow University before the Revolution and stayed on afterwards. Chelpanov was "a convinced idealist who tried to 'tame' experimental psychology (which was developing vigorously at the time), to keep it from going materialist" (p.113). Leontiev claims that this commitment led to unimpressive results (p.113); Chelpanov's institute was "backward in the main" (p.114). "But it was in the bosom of that Institute that a movement to revolutionise psychology began. It was headed by one of Chelpanov's associates, Konstantin Kornilov." The investigation that began this revolution "was, in general, a rather ordinary investigation, but the author considered it the beginning of a new psychological trend—reactology" (p.115). Reactology attempted to eliminate idealism from psychology and thus be Marxist. Chelpanov tried to defend himself, at first by declaring "that Marxism was dogma for which psychology had no use, but by the end of 1923 he had begun to assert that Marxism in psychology was precisely what his Institute was seeking" (p.115). By the end of 1923, he was replaced as director by Kornilov and the Institute was tasked with developing a Marxist psychology (p.116).
Thus 1924 began with a search for new Marxist talent as well as new directions. "For all the diversity of these early searches, which might have given the impression of incoherence"—recall that he had just criticized the methodological pluralism of American psychology—"there was something all the team members had in common," which was the need for a psychology based in Marxism.
But the only member of the Institute with a solid Marxist background was Lev Vygotsky, who later became a major Soviet psychologist and founded a scientific school of its own. Kornilov, unfortunately, did not have a proper grasp of dialectical materialism. His knowledge was superficial, and he proposed a programme that was wrong from the very start. ... Clearly, the programme he put forth was sterile. (p.117)Luria then returns to the present day, worrying that not enough people are working on methodology; "I am worried about the methodological laxity I see in my branch of science" (p.120).
He then turns to the characteristics of activity theory, which is based on the person's (labor) activity rather than consumption:
One can say that drives and demands dictate a person's acts; they are the prime movers in personality development and achievement in a particular field of endeavor. The opposite view holds that the development of human activity, its motives and means, transforms the demands, generates new ones, changes the hierarchy of drives and wishes in such a way that the satisfaction of some of them becomes merely a necessary condition for the activity of the person, for his existence as an individual.
If one proceeds from the former point of view, the psychology of personality must based on the primacy of consumption ("man works in order to eat") while the latter theory bases the psychology of the individual on the primacy of activity through which man asserts himself as personality ("man eats in order to work").
I would like to stress that the new anthropological, or naturalistic conception, looks quite convincing and illustrative. Its arguments have the appeal of being natural and simple. It requires a degree of sophistication and a philosophical background to see that the satisfaction of various needs, while a necessary condition for all human activity, is only the beginning of the psychological problem. The situation that interests the psychologist is this: once man's primary needs have been satisfied, how will he act, in what direction will he develop and, consequently, how his will needs change. [sic] (p.122)This is a nicely expressed key understanding of activity theory, which is built on Engels' notion that labor made man. And further down:
So, one not born a personality, one becomes a personality by socialisation and enculturation, by acquiring the habits, skills and methods of handling tools. Personality is a product of social activity and its traits can be explained only in these terms. Such a personality trait as aggressiveness offers a classic example. It is, of course, manifested differently in a choleric person than in a phlegmatic one, but attributing aggressiveness to the qualities of temperament is no more scientific than attributing the causes of wars to people's propensity to fight.
We see that the Marxist approach to the psychology of personality does overturn the traditional system of views. The problems of the qualities of neural activity, temperaments, etc., are not expelled from personality theory, but they are considered in a non-traditional way -- they now interest us because we want to know how a personality uses its innate aptitudes and qualities and how it realises the individual traits given it by nature. (p.123)
In contrast, he accuses the West of "vulgar eclecticism" (p.125).
In Chapter 3, Levitin discusses and interviews Alexander Luria, who (I discovered here) won the Lomonosov Prize in 1967 for his work in neuropsychology (p.133). Levitin mainly focuses on Luria's popular books and his rehabilitation work, but he also gets to Luria's memories of the early days of Soviet psychology. Luria recounts writing a letter to Kornilov describing his early studies with a Kornilov dynamometer; Kornilov, who had just been installed as Director, invited him to Moscow (p.154). Luria says this happened in the autumn of 1923 (p.154; note the slight conflict with the chronology Leontiev gave us).
Luria said that he divided his career into two phases: before and after meeting Vygotsky (p.159). "The most exciting years of the century and of my own life were the twenties—those associated with Vygotsky. I can hardly claim any credit for what I've done. It all comes from Vygotsky, and this is true not only of myself but of many others, only some admit it and some don't" (p.164). He doesn't name names.
Levitin recounts: "Three people—Vygotsky, Leontiev and Luria—set out to 'develop the basic units of content for psychology'" (p.162).
The chapter on Mescharov was not as interesting to me, but I pull this quote attributed to Vygotsky, which ties his focus on word meaning to labor:
One can hardly understand the history of labour and the history of speech separately. Man has created not only the tools which gave him mastery over nature; he has created stimuli for directing his own behaviour with the help of which he can control his psychic processes. This is seen clearly if one looks at the early stages of man's development. On Borneo and Celebes sticks for digging which had smaller sticks attached to the end were found. While sowing rice, the stick was used to hoe the soil and the little stick produced a sound. That sound was something like a working exclamation or order to set the pace for the movements. The sound of the contrivance attached to the hoe replaces the
human voice, or at any rate performs the same function.
"That blending of sign and tool as symbolically expressed in the primitive hoe shows how early the sign and later, its highest form -- the word -- began to play the role of human tools and how early the sign stimulus came to fulfil a specific function in the overall structure of the operations that took shape in the early stages of man's labour activity. (p.230)
Similarly, I'll skip the chapter on Davydov, bringing us to the end of this book.
Overall, the book was genuinely useful, even though I wouldn't consider a book written by a Soviet journalist and published by a Soviet publishing house to be an especially trustworthy source. At least it's untrustworthy in predictable, detectable ways. If you're interested in what some of the giants of Soviet psychology were saying under these conditions, this book is an interesting, readable source that will provide anecdotes and insights you probably won't get elsewhere.
Thursday, August 27, 2015
Reading :: The Origin of Species
The Origin of Species
By Charles Darwin
Late this summer, I mentioned to a colleague that I had just finished Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations and was working on Karl Marx's Capital. He replied: "Now you just have to read Darwin's The Origin of Species." Of course he was right: Darwin's book had a huge impact on everything, but especially on economics via Marx and Engels. So, as is my practice with classic books, I downloaded the cheapest Kindle version I could find.
The Origin of Species didn't provide me with any fundamentally new ideas, of course—but that's because it's one of those basic texts whose ideas have been worked into most subsequent works. The fundamental shift was in understanding the world in terms of "modification and coadaptation," as Darwin put it, rather than as static systems. Darwin applied this viewpoint to the biological world (and, through Lyell's work, the geological world); Marx and Engels made their breakthroughs by applying it to the economic and social world as well. Engels is clearest about this borrowing in Dialectics of Nature, in which he makes clear that biological evolution is just one example of dialectics.
Darwin's approach to the argument was interesting to me as well. He brings the reader along quickly, starting with a basic discussion of coadaptation with which no one could disagree, then using that discussion as a basis for challenging the notion that each species was created in place, as is. As he builds the argument, he uses Lyell's work in geography to give us an idea of the vast spans of time in which the coadaptation process could work. Later, he answers the question of why we don't see continual adaptation in the fossil record—the record is incomplete. (Modern evolutionary theory suggests that this answer is only partial and that coadaptation typically happens in spurts rather than gradually.)
Overall, I was glad I read this book, especially in terms of my current project, understanding how it provided the basis for Marx's and Engels' work.
By Charles Darwin
Late this summer, I mentioned to a colleague that I had just finished Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations and was working on Karl Marx's Capital. He replied: "Now you just have to read Darwin's The Origin of Species." Of course he was right: Darwin's book had a huge impact on everything, but especially on economics via Marx and Engels. So, as is my practice with classic books, I downloaded the cheapest Kindle version I could find.
The Origin of Species didn't provide me with any fundamentally new ideas, of course—but that's because it's one of those basic texts whose ideas have been worked into most subsequent works. The fundamental shift was in understanding the world in terms of "modification and coadaptation," as Darwin put it, rather than as static systems. Darwin applied this viewpoint to the biological world (and, through Lyell's work, the geological world); Marx and Engels made their breakthroughs by applying it to the economic and social world as well. Engels is clearest about this borrowing in Dialectics of Nature, in which he makes clear that biological evolution is just one example of dialectics.
Darwin's approach to the argument was interesting to me as well. He brings the reader along quickly, starting with a basic discussion of coadaptation with which no one could disagree, then using that discussion as a basis for challenging the notion that each species was created in place, as is. As he builds the argument, he uses Lyell's work in geography to give us an idea of the vast spans of time in which the coadaptation process could work. Later, he answers the question of why we don't see continual adaptation in the fossil record—the record is incomplete. (Modern evolutionary theory suggests that this answer is only partial and that coadaptation typically happens in spurts rather than gradually.)
Overall, I was glad I read this book, especially in terms of my current project, understanding how it provided the basis for Marx's and Engels' work.
Reading :: Running Lean
Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works
By Ash Maurya
At the end of this book, Maurya tells us: "A book, like large software, is never finished—only released." And that's the approach he took: as he describes the process in Running Lean, he floated the idea of writing a book on his blog, iterated the concept and ideas with his community, released the book, and now invites us to enter the conversation via his blog, workshops, and newsletter.
Running Lean describes the lean startup approach well, and it's easy to read and follow. The subtitle emphasizes the key lesson, which is to iterate. And iteration spreads across the entire startup, including the product but also the business model, marketing, value proposition, and the other parts that make up a successful startup.
Beyond iteration, Maurya provides plenty of other advice that may be surprising to new startups:
By Ash Maurya
At the end of this book, Maurya tells us: "A book, like large software, is never finished—only released." And that's the approach he took: as he describes the process in Running Lean, he floated the idea of writing a book on his blog, iterated the concept and ideas with his community, released the book, and now invites us to enter the conversation via his blog, workshops, and newsletter.
Running Lean describes the lean startup approach well, and it's easy to read and follow. The subtitle emphasizes the key lesson, which is to iterate. And iteration spreads across the entire startup, including the product but also the business model, marketing, value proposition, and the other parts that make up a successful startup.
Beyond iteration, Maurya provides plenty of other advice that may be surprising to new startups:
- "Your product is NOT 'the product'": The solution you offer is only part of the overall product you produce; your overall product is actually the business model within which the product makes sense.
- Your key question is: "Do I have a problem worth solving?" A problem worth solving must be a must-have (something the customers want); viable (either the customers or someone else must be willing to pay for it); and feasible (something you can actually solve).
- "How do I accelerate growth?" Maurya offers this simple principle: "pivots are about finding a plan that works, while optimizations are about accelerating that plan."
But the book isn't just principles, Maurya offers several pieces of advice for setting up feedback loops and iterating, including running experiments, performing customer interviews, and engaging in rapid contextual design.
The result is readable, easy to follow, and interesting. If you're interested in the Lean approach, but Steve Blank's books were too thick and Eric Ries' book seemed too repetitive, this might be the book for you. I just wish I had read it earlier—I might have used it for my course on Writing for Entrepreneurs. Maybe next time!
Monday, August 10, 2015
Read my articles in the UT Repository
Interested in one of my articles, but can't find a free copy? Unwilling to pay lots of money to download one from a journal? Or just want to get a free preview to decide whether it's worth pursuing?
I've recently posted several preprint (legal, freely available) copies of my past articles in the UT Repository. Each includes the publication venue and (when applicable) the DOI, so you can find the original venue.
I've recently posted several preprint (legal, freely available) copies of my past articles in the UT Repository. Each includes the publication venue and (when applicable) the DOI, so you can find the original venue.
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