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The way Entrepreneurs Think and Act is a lot more complex than Risk Taking.

Walking the tightrope in the Circus can be very dangerous. Yet why does the Performer do it? As Prof.Manimala of IIM-Bangalore points out in the Businessgyan Panel Discussion, the daring acts of the Circus Performer seems daring to the audience, however the performer himself has taken sufficient safeguards and training to ensure that he does not meet with a fatal fall. The Performer has enough knowledge, training, and safeguards to give him confidence that he is not at risk.

the-spark-82An Entrepreneur to many looks like this Circus Performance, looks daring and macho. This is because for the observer, the Entrepreneur is doing something that he himself possibly will not do. This is the reason why entrepreneurship seems so daring. However look from the entrepreneur's lens: Is he in business because he feels there is a big chance of failure? From his viewpoint is what he is doing risky? If it was will he do it in the first place? Entrepreneurs know how to mitigate and manage risk, they are not risk takers. And even if they lose money or time it is what they were prepared to lose. Sure Entrepreneurs might underestimate the effort required or overestimate the probability of success, but that is another point altogether, a similar expectation mismatch can happen in any new product launch even in a large company.

Prof. Saras Sarasvathy of Darden School adds that "While most people would agree that managers are largely risk averse, they would assume that entrepreneurs are risk-takers. Research has shown, however, that for the most part both are risk averse." Entrepreneurship therefore is not
about dare.

If Entrepreneurship is not risky then there is really no excuse for someone not to be an entrepreneur. However it is important to observe how entrepreneurs do things differently. Instead of setting a goal, and managing resources to meet the goal effectively, entrepreneurs start with the resources that they have in their control and leverage it to create a new reality. Prof. Saras Sarasvathy has a word for this - ‘Effectual Reasoning', "to the extent that we can control the future, we do not need to predict it." She adds that "Consciously, or unconsciously, they act as if they believe that the future is not "out there" to be discovered, but that it gets created through the very strategies of the players." This is very different from the Causal Logic taught at management schools and practiced by managers.

Risk, essentially are events which are not planned; seasoned entrepreneurs, however, know that surprises are not deviations from the path. Instead they are the norm, the flora and fauna of the landscape, from which one learns to forge a path through the jungle. Prof Saras in a research paper observes, "In fact, several of the expert entrepreneurs I studied explicitly stated that being in a market that could be predicted was not such a good idea, since there would always be someone smarter and with deeper pockets who would predict it better than they could." Seen from this light the perception of risk totally changes. Afterall as someone said "Change is the only Constant."

Regarding failures Prof.Saras Sarasvathy says that "Curiously enough, this focus of entrepreneurial thinking on using any and all available means, even the products of apparent "failure" makes the entrepreneur less resource-dependent than the manager." Scarcity of resources may even be seen as an impetus for invention rather than as a constraint. Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay often mentions that the reason he built such a robust self-sustaining platform on which millions of people could trade at the same time was because he did not have venture capital funding.

Yet we do see big failures around us, and this reminds me of what Waren Buffet had to say about risk taking, of course from an investment context, "To make the money they did not have and did not need they risked money that they did have and did need, that is plain foolish." An expert Entrepreneur does not make this mistake. Effectual reasoning may not necessarily increase the probability of success of startups, but it reduces the costs of failure by enabling the failure to occur earlier and at lower levels of investment.

Does that mean Entrepreneurs do not go through hardtimes? The struggles and the pain? The certainly do, Entrepreneurs are committed to their objectives, have a must do attitude and are willing to go the extra mile, however are these not qualities that you would expect from any other successful professional in any area be it sports, arts, research and management?

Resources :- http://www.effectuation.org/ftp/effectua.pdf

The author is the Chief Catalyst of businessgyan. His area of interest include business strategy and innovation. For feedback and more information, e-mail: www.businessgyan.com/balaji.

Issue BG82 Jan 08

The fall of the rupee against the dollar is hitting hard the Indian companies that had relied on the relatively cheaper dollar funds to fund their growth in the boom time. Telecom major Reliance Communications' debt stood at Rs 25,820 crore on December 31, 2008. It was Rs 17,440 crore at the end of March 2007. Significantly, about 70 per cent of the debt is in foreign currency. "Although the company has benefited in terms of competitive interest rates on foreign currency debt, adverse movements in currency rates have affected its financial profile," says a release by credit rating agency ICRA on Reliance Communications. As the rupee continues its downward march, many companies are faced with the prospect of an inflated debt on its balance sheet.

Till early 2008, companies which had left their foreign currency positions unhedged had emerged gainers. As the rupee appreciated against the dollar to below-40 levels, their dollar debt fell significantly in rupee terms. But in 2008, the rupee was the second worse performing currency, falling 19.2 per cent against the dollar. This calendar year, it has already seen a markdown of 5.7 per cent, says a Kotak Mahindra Bank research report. "For a lot of companies whose debt is largely in dollars, repayment obligations would increase in a similar magnitude if they have left their positions open," says Vikas Aggarwal, senior vice-president, ICRA.

Companies that have hedged their currency risks are safe to the extent of the cover. "But we see that it is difficult to hedge oneself on long-term loans fully as the market is very illiquid and one does not get good rates and quotes for that," says the chief financial officer of a large public sector bank. Also, there was the belief that the rupee would appreciate.

Many companies borrowed using foreign currency convertible bonds. FCCB is a debt instrument with an option to convert to equity. But if this option is not exercised, it remains as a bond to be repaid on maturity. "Given the buoyancy of the stock market, the issuers would have expected the bonds to be converted into equity. And expecting this conversion, most companies would not have hedged these positions," says the treasury head of a private sector bank. Between 2004-05 and 2007-08, Indian companies are estimated to have raised about $20billion through FCCBs.

The erosion in FCCB prices prompted the Reserve Bank to allow Indian companies to buy back them. "However, due to limited funding, companies have found it difficult to buy back FCCBs. Reports indicate that just 9 of the 156 companies that raised FCCBs have exercised the premature buyback option so far," says a Citigroup report. Companies are not allowed to borrow from Indian markets to buy back these bonds. With other funding sources drying up, they would have to turn to banks to help them repay the loans on maturity.

Meanwhile, a Kotak Mahindra Bank research report expects that "by end-December, the rupee would recover to 50.5-52 a dollar." According to a Credit Suisse research report, "beyond 2009, the rupee could rally below 50 per dollar, as capital inflows potentially pick up and growth accelerates."

The uncertainty about the direction of the rupee has resulted in companies hesitating on taking a hedging call. Says Aggarwal, "Companies are wondering whether to hedge at current levels because what if the rupee comes back to 48 level. A prudent company would be one that is largely hedged."

A simple triangle can integrate all market theories. Can we spot it?

While writing ‘Theory of Moral Sentiments’ in 1776, Adam Smith would never have thought that after two centuries people will find it oxymoronic to see morals and sentiment in the same phrase. Now, sentiment creates the popular news, lack of morals are ascribed to capitalists and what is left of the father’s work are fragmented theories.

Today, markets and prices are believed to be efficient, inefficient, random and/or ordered. All efficiency experts won’t subscribe to the mathematical order and some believers of inefficiency will call randomness preposterous.

If this was not enough, we even have a few thinkers defining a new model of finance different from economics. Unlike the coherent attempt to find a universal scientific string theory, there is no attempt to look for an integrated market model. A few behaviourologists are trashing efficiency theorists, who in turn call behavioural finance as nothing more than ‘anomalies dredging’.

Meanwhile the other two viz. random and order experts tune their trumpets. It is a cacophony out there, exacerbating the confusion as the historical crisis unfolds.

There is one thing common in all these market specialisations. Implicitly or explicitly they all look at patterns. Behaviourologists are trying to model human emotion. Fundamentalists attempt to model market information. Random experts wait for the recurring odd event.

And, order driven experts call the market model a pattern or fractal. Behaviourologists raise some questions like, “Can the human mind count?” There are of course limitations to the human minds computing ability, the very reason we cannot be called pure rational beings.

This is the same reason why even if there was complete order till infinity, we would find it muddled with randomness. What if the whole debate regarding market type is because even specialists, like rest of us all suffer from biases? What if markets were efficient, inefficient, ordered and random on the same scale but on a different time? What if order or chaos was a factor of time?

If we assume this to be true, we start answering most of the discrepancies between the various theories. Behaviourologists say humans suffer from an extrapolation bias, suggesting that we can’t see the future and we judge the past and present to estimate the future. This is why when we are on the efficient side of the market mountain, we just see efficiency. Simply putting it, we just see positivity when we are on a rising trend.

When markets are inefficient or say falling, we just look down and are unable to see the bottom or impending order. This extrapolation bias also explains why humans under-react or over-react. When we cannot see the top of the market mountain, we cannot judge how far the high is, this is why we under-react. And, when we are on the declining face, we just can’t seem to place the low and we tend to over-react.

Behaviourologists call it momentum and reversal dichotomy as they don’t see the market mountain. We can explain every other behavioural human error of loss aversion, disposition, ambiguity, validity, representativeness, winner’s curse, gambler’s fallacy, heuristics, framing, risk return distortion, over and under confidence, hope and anxiety, optimism and pessimism, if we continue to look at the market as a two dimensional triangular pattern, a face up and down, a low- high - low, cycle. One can see how the errors start getting polarized along the positive and negative slope, order being the positive and flip side of the negative uncertain chaos.

The triangle also explains why behaviourologists see the fundamentalist’s conservatism in earning predictions as the reason positive surprises tend to be followed by further positive surprises. The unanticipated surprise is the hallmark of overconfidence, a positive slope characteristic of the cycle.

The three-phased glitter and stock selections linked to excess volume, recent news and extreme price reaction is another up cycle character. The unending debate of the Fama and French three factor model, one side talking about efficiency and other side challenging it are also on different slopes of the same triangular cycle. Psychologists say fundamentalists select stocks like bonds, “good stocks are stocks of good companies”.

The reason they follow thumb rules and extrapolation is because the ongoing polarity of the up cycles, makes them comfortable and complacent. This is why a high degree of sentiment interest is followed by subsequent low returns. The turn down catches a majority by surprise. This is why psychologists compare option traders to farmers, taking more risk with cash crops after planting sustenance crops and hedging the downside. It is our way to take more risk, inefficient risk when we feel hedged. This is the reason we always misprice options.

The same triangle can explain why buybacks happen more at market lows and cause under-reaction compared to over-reaction, meaning though buy backs end up performing better, they get less attention from investors, investors under-react. Possession and dispossession of dividend also leads to over-reaction and under-reaction. When investors feel they own a dividend, they tend to over-react and take more risk and vice versa.

The behavioural criticism that humans are naive trend watchers is because humans don’t understand cyclicality. It is this same lack of understanding of cyclicality why past performance fails. The holistic pattern can also explain why prices will always keep oscillating between efficiency and inefficiency? Why riskless pair trading done on price will never be riskless? Why long-short funds playing on price are not hedged like LTCM thought and can fail? Why there will always be psychologists writing ‘trading is hazardous to your health’? Why existence of markets is linked with our inability to see the triangle? Why flipping coins can explain randomness, order, efficiency and inefficiency? Why there will always be a conflict and challenge to earn profits in economics? Why capitalism will always be driven by crisis? Why correlations are cyclical like performance? Why behavioural strategies have more tests to pass?

Why saving for tomorrow is a hindsight bias? Why we save when we should invest, and why we invest when we should save? Why Mandelbort and Taleb work together, though one is the father of mathematical order and the other claims to be the philosopher of randomness? Why ordered fractals are very close to chaotic randomness? Why the Nobel Prize winning prospect theory is about ownership and disposition that blinds humans against cyclicality? Why Prechter-Parker’s Financial-Economic dichotomy in social behaviour dynamics is not the new model of finance, but the other face of the mountain? Why demand sensitivity to price can rise and fall? Why we can make money in markets through physics, mathematics, history, psychology and so on? Why access to information and belief in it is triangular?

The two-faced cycle links everything. We are not trying to simplify 200 years of market knowledge. It was always like this, simple. Psychologists are as biased as everybody else, even if they claim to be otherwise.

Time contrarianism is not for everyone, as the preordained harmony kills all the beautiful stories.

The author is CEO, Orpheus CAPITALS, a global alternative research firm.

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Every organization goes through tremendous change as it grows. In fact, change is what keeps it going. Adapting to change is a great asset to any organization. Take the case of Oracle which started as a database company. Today, it has grown into one stop shop for enterprise applications. With the economic downturn that the US is facing today, it is one of the few organizations with the resilience to weather the recession.

Willingness to change is strength, even if it means plunging part of the company into total confusion for a while. - Jack Welch

As an organization matures, it has to increasingly find opportunities to enhance productivity. This does not mean that it must implement software. Refining strategies and business processes is often at the heart of such productivity improvements. Often times, small and medium organizations become enamored by the lure of Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) applications. One is led to believe these days, that software is the panacea for all problems plaguing the organization. And this is additionally fueled by reports of organizations making dramatic improvements in productivity or profitability. While such results are not impossible, they cannot be used as yardsticks to determine your needs
A detailed analysis of the organizations strengths and weaknesses is the first step to bring about change. While every management consultant will swear by Strategy Maps, Balanced Scorecard or at least a SWOT (Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats) analysis, it might boil down to a simple process documentation to identify the pain points. Every small business owner will agree that the biggest challenge facing them is, not surprisingly, a lack of time. Senior Management's time is spent mainly on ensuring that the business is able to keep up with the daily challenges. One has to take time out to moving from a reactive state to a proactive state. Making small changes in the way you do business is going to make a world of difference to its profitability
Let me explain using a simple illustration. A well known manufacturer of Pneumatic products in Tamil Nadu has followed a no questions asked return policy since the inception of the organization two decades ago. The company is now one of the most profitable in the region with very loyal customers. If a customer complains that the product is defective, they just ship them a new one immediately. The customer has an option to send back the defective one at the earliest available opportunity. Why do I think this example is relevant
Typically, a manufacturer sends someone onsite to investigate the cause of the issue and then replaces it. What this means is that there are additional support costs. Not that the cost of replacement goes away, either. The customer will still insist on a replacement because he does not trust that unit anymore. If, on the other hand, you do not have a field support staff at all you save considerable travel and support costs. The customer feels happy that the replacement is sent immediately. The defective product can be added to the QA team that will then dissect the product to identify the fault and eventually build a solution into the manufacturing process
Another company that follows a similar principle is Intuit. They do not have a support staff at all. They offer free support and the software developers themselves attend support calls. This enhances the feedback mechanism and reduces overhead costs for the company that can be passed on to the customer.
Both these companies have proven without a doubt that, traditional ERP or CRM processes are not the only way to realize profitability and productivity gains. It is unique to each organization and takes a time and effort to change.
One method that is used by sales people of enterprise applications is to identify the tactical pain points in the organization. These tactical pains then group into logical strategic issues. These in turn affect a key business objective. Therefore, if one can attempt to resolve the tactical pains one by one, it will lead to fulfillment of a key business objective over time.
Such initiatives involve great amounts of energy from the top management in identifying the need, analyzing the situation, designing a solution and propagating that solution throughout the organization. Change management plays a very important role in such situations, much more that the process changes itself. As Mr. Welch says, willingness to change is strength. Make sure your employees, customers, vendors and partners know that you are attempting to make a change. This will in itself boost the confidence in the organization.
Make sure your employees, customers, vendors and partners know that you are attempting to make a change.
In short, change is something many of us are not ready to welcome in our lives, be it professional or personal. We tend to maintain status quo to a great extent. In the end, change wins. Even if you oppose it and do not give in, you have learnt something new in the process.