Dr. Andrew Corbett, PhDProfessor, Babson College

Andrew Corbett - Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship - Babson College

20 Jan 2012 · 2 min

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In this brief presentation, Dr. Andrew Corbett, an associate professor of entrepreneurship at Babson College, introduces his Babson Insights article on the often‑avoided topic of failure in entrepreneurship. He explains that his research was sparked by years of corporate experience, where he observed that some initiatives yielded valuable learning while others did not. From these observations, he argues that entrepreneurs, educators, and managers develop mental "scripts"—patterns, routines, and models—that shape how they respond to new initiatives. Understanding these scripts is crucial when a project begins to fail, because it informs the decision of when and how to terminate it. Corbett’s research identifies three distinct mental models that people use to decide when to kill a failing initiative, offering a framework for more effective failure management. The video serves as an overview of the article’s key arguments and invites viewers to read the full piece for deeper insight.

Chapters

Hi, my name is Dr. Andrew Corbett, PhD. I'm a professor of entrepreneurship here at Babson College. The article I wrote for the latest issue of Insights that accompanies this video is about a topic that we don't like to talk about too much as entrepreneurs and educators, and that's failure. But failure is a very important topic for all of us as entrepreneurs, educators, scholars, and the rest. Usually, the most important reason why it's important is because with failure comes some learning. This research I did was motivated by my years in corporate life, where I was involved in a number of corporate initiatives. Some were successful, others not so much. And what I'd find over time is that from some of them we learned and we were able to adapt and go forward and take things we learned from that. And in other instances, we weren't. So this motivated the research I've been doing for the past, oh, half decade or so that looked at issues like this. And what I found, and you'll see in this article when you read it, is that it's important for us to understand that all corporate entrepreneurs and people in general walks of life doing everything develop what are called scripts. And they look at things and they sort of develop patterns, routines, and mental models to deal with things. And why is this important for us as innovators, entrepreneurs, managers, leaders? Well, when you've got that new initiative that's going in your organization, and sometimes they do fail, you've got to learn how to kill this appropriately. When's the right time? When do we make a decision that it's, it's time to let this thing go? And what I found in my research was that there are 3 mental models that people tend to use. And you can read more about this in the latest issue of Babson Insights when you take a look at my article.