Study shows 35 percent of U.S. entrepreneurs dyslexic

From The Economist:

In 1995 Captain G.R. Gopinath, a retired military officer, had a chance encounter with an unemployed helicopter pilot that got him started on setting up India’s first helicopter company. He spent three years lobbying government bureaucrats to obtain the necessary licences and sold all his possessions and mortgaged his house to raise capital.

Even in his darkest years he never had any doubt that he was destined for success. “I knew this could not go wrong. I knew the money would come,” he says. And sure enough his business eventually took off. That allowed him to pursue a new vision—cheap flights. Why should Indians travel the length and breadth of their huge country on trains when Americans got on planes? He established India’s first low-cost airline, Air Deccan, pushing the government to relax regulations and using the internet to cut booking costs.

Entrepreneurs operate in all kinds of ways. Some see a market opportunity and draw up a business plan to take advantage of it. Others are more like the captain, driven by an inner force to start a business and unwilling to take “no” for an answer.

A growing body of evidence suggests that entrepreneurs have certain distinctive psychological traits. Noam Wasserman, of HBS, suggests that many entrepreneurs are unusually, sometimes excessively, confident. They are convinced that, against all the odds, they will be able to turn their dream into reality. This sometimes allows them to do something at which most people fail, but it also means they hardly ever hit the forecasts in their business plans.

According to Mr Wasserman, entrepreneurs are strongly attached to their companies. They habitually talk about “their babies”. This motivates them to give their all to their companies, whether they make money or not. But it can also be their Achilles heel. Once they get started, they hate giving up control of their companies, even if they are no good at management.

Entrepreneurs are also highly tolerant of risk. A group of scientists at Cambridge University studied the brains of 16 entrepreneurs, chosen because they had started at least two high-tech companies, as well as 17 regular managers. They found that when making rational decisions, the two groups produced the same results. But when making “hot” or risky decisions, entrepreneurs were consistently bolder.

Entrepreneurs also share some more surprising psychological traits. Julie Logan, of the Cass Business School in London, found in separate surveys in 2001 and 2007 that 20% of the British entrepreneurs and 35% of the American entrepreneurs she studied were dyslexic. (By contrast, only 1% of corporate managers are similarly afflicted.) Famous dyslexic businessmen include Richard Branson, Charles Schwab, Ted Turner, John Chambers and Henry Ford. Two possible explanations are that dyslexics learn early in life to delegate certain tasks to trustworthy people, and that they do well in business to make up for doing badly at school.