Designing for The Entrepreneurial Mind
I am doing some work for a small firm that specializes in providing products and services to new entrepreneurs. The conditions for starting new businesses have changed dramatically over the last few years. My client wants to be sure their offerings are optimized for how the “entrepreneurial minds actually works” in this new environment. A perfect problem for a cognitive designer.
One interesting thing has surfaced already is the demographics of their customers. Turns out your typical entrepreneur is near middle age, well-educated, married and with kids. That seems a bit odd but is backup by the literature. For example, Strategy+Business reports in The True Characteristics of Entrepreneurs that:
”The authors surveyed 549 company founders in a dozen high-growth industries — including health care, aerospace, defense, and computers — and found that their average age when they launched their business was 40. Contrary to popular perception, most entrepreneurs came from middle- or upper-lower-class families and were married with two or more children, in addition to being highly educated (less than 5 percent reported having a degree below a bachelor’s).”
Such individuals are likely to think-and-feel (have cognitive needs) very different than the 20 something, risk-taking, single, workaholic entrepreneur we hear about in the media so often.
