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Which Entrepreneurs are Coachable and Why?

Kevin A. Bryan; András Tilcsik; Brooklynn Zhu

Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, 105 St George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 3E6, Canada (e-mail: )

American Economic Review 2017

Is coachability a usable concept for startups? Using a dataset on high-growth startups in a prominent university incubator, we show that firm characteristics do predict which firms are likely to follow advice but that these “coachable” firms are not more likely to achieve positive outcomes. The reason is that advice may be rejected either because the firm is stubborn and uncoachable, or because the firm possesses capabilities related to the advice which is hard for outsiders to observe.

DOI
10.1257/aer.p20171010
Volume
107 (5)
Pages
312-316
Language
en
Export
BibTeX
Sources
crossref openalex