دانلود رایگان ترجمه مقاله هشت اشتباه بزرگ مذاکراتی که کارآفرینان انجام می دهند (نشریه وایلی 2018)

هشت اشتباه بزرگ مذاکراتی که کارآفرینان انجام می دهند

The Eight Big Negotiation Mistakes that Entrepreneurs Make

Abstract

Entrepreneurs, whose job is to transform ideas into new products or services for which there is a market, pride themselves on creating disruption and driving innovation. But they often fumble key interactions because they don’t know how to handle the negotiation challenges that almost always arise. Entrepreneurship typically entails a series of interactions between founders, partners, potential partners, investors, and others at various stages of the entrepreneurial process – from the “seed” stage when the business is just an idea to the “exit” stage when the entrepreneur sells or departs. We have scrutinized the full range of entrepreneurial negotiations seeking to identify the most common negotiation mistakes that entrepreneurs make, and in this article we describe eight of them. We discuss how they can learn to prevent these mistakes – especially through proper preparation – and which strategies they can deploy to overcome the mistakes they do make.

Introduction

The great majority of start-up businesses fail, and most of the entrepreneurs who succeed have, at some point, made mistakes and “bounced back” from them. Many entrepreneurs fumble key interactions because they don’t know how to handle the negotiation challenges that almost always arise. Some mistakenly believe that deals are entirely about money, when, in fact, they involve much more than that. Entrepreneurship typically entails a series of interactions between founders, partners, potential partners, investors, and others at various stages of the entrepreneurial process – from the “seed” stage when the business is just an idea to the “exit” stage when the entrepreneur sells or departs. We have scrutinized the full range of entrepreneurial negotiations seeking to identify the most common mistakes that entrepreneurs make, how they can learn to prevent these mistakes – especially through proper preparation – and which strategies they can deploy to overcome mistakes they do make. The job of entrepreneurs is to transform ideas into new products or services for which there is a market. Along the way, they must convince others to share their vision, and, even in the face of skepticism, assemble supporters to move their ideas forward. In addition, they must interact with numerous potential partners, adjusting their vision in response to new information and partners’ input, and produce a business plan. They must “pitch” their plans to potential investors and customers (i.e., persuade them of their plans’ value and potential) – sometimes offering shared control or ownership in exchange for the money or support they need. With or without external funding, they must find ways of pursuing their (changing) vision while satisfying their founding team and a growing circle of stakeholders. Entrepreneurs pride themselves on creating disruption and driving innovation. At each stage of every entrepreneurial effort, and sometimes even within a single stage, circumstances can shift quickly – and unexpectedly. Planning is critical to any entrepreneurial effort, but so is the ability to improvise or adapt. What we have found in our research is that entrepreneurs who pay close attention to what’s happening around them, while simultaneously keeping a clear map or plan in mind, achieve the best results. Our research suggests that the single biggest threat to entrepreneurial success is an inability to effectively manage the negotiations that arise at key interactions in the evolution of a start-up. We’ve interviewed a series of entrepreneurs who have overcome serious setbacks.1 We have also combed through the published literature looking for evidence that helps explain their long-term success. In his book Innovation and Entrepreneurship (1985), Peter Drucker analyzed the challenges and opportunities that start-up innovators face. In The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses (2011), Eric Ries summarized the lessons of lean manufacturing and reported that it is possible to use rapid scientific experimentation to shorten product development cycles. In Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup (2013), Bill Aulet mapped a road to entrepreneurial success via the development of an innovative product. These and other authors have suggested that the key obstacles to entrepreneurial success arise from barriers to innovation. Based on our findings, however, we have developed the view that the failure to effectively manage negotiation challenges is equally important. Entrepreneurial negotiations are unique in several ways. Emotions, relationships, complexity, and uncertainty are central. Emotion and ego can come into play when investors want – and need – control over various aspects of a new enterprise, while inventors are loath to give up control. Successful entrepreneurs must overcome the blindness that emotional reactions can create. They must find ways to ensure that their ego doesn’t get the better of them. When someone invests in a venture, the main asset that he or she is buying is a “share” of the people involved (their ideas, their expertise, their work). When the parties shake hands, they commit to a relationship, often for an extended period. A proud inventor may find it difficult to give up sufficient control to make a partnership worthwhile to an investor, while investors may fail to appreciate – and express sufficient appreciation for – what an entrepreneur has already accomplished. Many new ventures revolve around innovation. Consequently, because of the product’s or service’s newness or technical sophistication, people may find it difficult to understand what the entrepreneur is proposing. Effective entrepreneurs must learn to make something new and intricate understandable to someone who doesn’t have the same technical expertise that they do. Thus, complexity can impede progress on working out a deal. In founding and managing a start-up, entrepreneurs must also cope with uncertainty. Many things can suddenly undermine a deal, including changes in market conditions, the rise of strong competitors, changes in regulations, and competition from more lucrative investment options. It is difficult to attend to all such contingencies when negotiating the terms of a deal, especially if the entrepreneur and her counterpart have different tolerances for risk. In entrepreneurial negotiation, emotion, technical complexity, and uncertainty are all heightened and create unique negotiation challenges for entrepreneurs.