"The Economist": Entrepreneurs more "alternative"

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The psychological characteristics of an excellent computer programmer are very close to those of Asperger's syndrome. (TechWeb map)

A few decades ago, William White in his best-selling book, the organization, that he thought the company was too fond of "versatile" presidents, so many companies had reached the point of "being hostile to genius". Today, this "prejudice" is reflected in the opposite. Software companies are aggressively recruiting geeks, and hedge funds are also eager to suck in weird-looking customers, and Hollywood is doing its best to accommodate the whims of creative talent, and politicians are counting on entrepreneurs who break the rules to create jobs. And the school playground is different, the market for these alternative exceptionally kind.

Recruiters have noted that the psychological qualities of an excellent computer programmer are very close to those of Asperger's Syndrome: obsessive interest in narrow subjects, love of numbers, laws and machines, fascination with repetitive work, and a deaf ear to social signals. People in Silicon Valley joked that the Internet was invented for themselves by people who were on the autism spectrum. On the Internet, you can contact people without having to endure the pain of meeting.

Wired magazine called it "Geek syndrome". "The bosses of these companies are a certain degree of autism," said an early Facebook investor, Peter Till, who interviewed the New Yorker about internet companies established over the past decade. "Former Facebook employee Huang Yishan wrote about the company's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, who had" a bit of a sense of autism, "because" he wouldn't give you much positive feedback or affirmation that he was listening to you. " Newmark, founder of Craig's classified advertising network, said that when he first heard the symptoms of Asperger's syndrome, he felt the symptoms were "so familiar that he felt unwell".

At the top of the financial industry, similar features are common. Nowadays, the broad-passenger has replaced the traditional social elites. Michael Lewis's documentary works "Big Short" in the protagonist Michael Bayry personality withdrawn. The hedge-fund manager was in the medical school to amuse himself by writing a stock-market blog. His post attracted the attention of a lot of asset managers, who eventually gave up being a doctor and started his own business. Later, he found that there were problems in the mortgage market, so he made a heavy bet that the real estate market would collapse and make a bowl full of money. "The only person I can trust in the [financial] crisis is the man with Asperger's syndrome and a fake eyeball," Lewis said in a state radio interview. ”

Entrepreneurs also show some amazing psychological quirks. Zhu Li Roggin of Case Business School surveyed a group of entrepreneurs and found that 35% said they were dyslexic. By contrast, dyslexia accounts for only 10% per cent of the population, compared with 1% of professional managers.

The famous people with dyslexia include the founders of Ford, General Electric, IBM and IKEA, not to mention successful people in recent years, Schwab (founder of a Securities and economics company), Branson (Virgin Group), Chambers (Cisco), and Steve (Apple). There are many possibilities behind this. People with dyslexia learn how to distribute their work (for example, by having other students do their homework) from a very young school. They naturally tend to have no formal diploma or much literacy activity.

Hyperactivity is another kind of illness that has an indissoluble bond with an entrepreneur. People who can't concentrate on one thing for a long time can be very bad employees, but they can also be a source of new ideas. Some studies show that people with ADHD are six times times more likely to do business in the end. David, founder of cheap airline JetBlue, said: "My ADHD brain is naturally searching for ways to behave better." ADHD leads to lack of organization, procrastination, inability to concentrate and other adverse factors, but it also brings creativity and risk-taking ability. "Paul Offari is the founder of the gold test, and then created a variety of companies, he also suffers from dyslexia and ADHD." He once said: "I am easily bored with things, which gives me a lot of motivation." I think everyone should develop dyslexia and ADHD. ”

What else can the old-school organization do? Don't worry, he won't have a problem. The more sophisticated people the company employs, the wiser managers they need to control. Someone has to make sure that the boring but necessary work is done. Someone has to curry favor with the customers (and perhaps politicians). The job is best left to employees who don't reveal the idea of "ordinary people are stupid", and Zuckerberg's deputy Cherille Sandborg is doing well for Facebook at this point. Many start-ups have been rescued only after professional managers have replaced their founders. Of course, the managers have to learn to work with geeks.

From a broader perspective, the organization is being replaced by an organization that is changing the balance of power. The alternative people may not be easy to go to school. They were ridiculed by the good athletes and no one at the party. But today any serious organization needs such talents to succeed. As Gilland Marhotla, a Silicon Valley network, said: "When geeks are really cool." "(Sophie)