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SPEAKERS

Jeff York, Trent Williams, Brad Werner

 

Jeff York  00:14

Welcome to Creative Distillation where we distill entrepreneurial research into actionable insights. My name is Jeff York, I'm the research director at the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship. And I'm here today with my co host.

 

Brad Werner  00:28

I'm Brad Warner. I am an entrepreneur and I also work at the Deming center. So Jeff, great to see you through zoom. Like I'm sure that a lot of our listeners are kind of dealing with their everyday lives. And really looking forward to this episode,

 

Jeff York  00:42

you're I figured out about zoom, all of our teaching, obviously, moved online as COVID-19 hit. And I've spent so much time on zoom with my students in my classes and with co authors and things. And unfortunately, something I figured out just last week, it's also been my recreational outlet to hang out with friends and things like that. There's a here's a useful thing, not based on a research sample size of one probably useless. But here's what my experience is. If you don't do your social things in the same location that you do your work things on zoom. A student taught me this. They are much more fun. Otherwise, you just think you're working full time. So yes, which occasion?

 

Brad Werner  01:23

Like I said last week that I've been social distancing for years, my new normal is my old normal

 

Jeff York  01:29

is Hazel's delivery still working out.

 

Brad Werner  01:31

And actually, Hazel's is now bringing ice. So I have not only Bourbons and wines, calm, but the Iceman Cometh. Wow, really enjoying it.

 

Jeff York  01:40

That's, that's fantastic. I'm so glad those critical support systems are in place. And what beverage Are you enjoying this week,

 

Brad Werner  01:49

so I just actually poured a strand of hands yellow label, and I brought the strand of hands in today, because it's really my go to bourbon, reasonably priced made in Colorado. I think it has a great taste. And it's well stocked at Hazel so I don't have any concerns about that thing going low. I do occasionally though, throw in a whistle pig to start just to kind of change it up and then go back to my string of hands with a strain of hands yellow label really is my go to every day bourbon and is becoming five o'clock is coming much sooner these days than actually the last couple of weeks. So anyway, happy to be here and I'm happy to have straight hands with me.

 

Jeff York  02:28

Right. Okay, so my beverage I'm gonna one up you on the local news here. So let's see if like, Ah, there we go. This is a Growler that literally came from next door of homebrew last night for my, my neighbor. And tabulous Yeah, so I'm trying to go hyper hyper local, like literally like he walked up, whatever it took me to walk across our yards. It's kind of treacherous because the rattlesnakes are out now. So you gotta be careful on that journey. That's about the biggest danger. And this is a homebrew he made and the thing about my neighbor Wade, that makes us an appropriate beverage to enjoy. Other than the fact that he's a really good Brewer. Wade is a mountain fire fighter and he has been on call out on the frontlines helping on hospital calls, they basically go out and everything. So it's been really interesting to get his his perspective on this and I'll tell you what, man it sure it sure puts things in perspective in a hurry. You think about oh, I have to go on zoom with my students. Like that's that's me every morning. And I think about Wade out there like, you know, literally risking his life trying to help the public.

 

Brad Werner  03:33

Here's to you my friend. Cheers. Cheers.

 

Jeff York  03:38

So that's an interesting beer Wade made. It's a Norwegian yeast. This is like a hip new thing and brewing circles. I'm sure we'll be able to have one much to your chagrin sometime bread. It's a Norwegian farm. House ale. Usually farmhouse ales are made in France and Belgium. But this one's a Norwegian one. And the Norwegians put actual Juniper limbs into their beer. So what we did he's always clearing wood out and like make our neighborhood safer because I kind of live in a mountain area. He actually harvested fresh Juniper and made this beer right next door in his garage. So cheers anyway, incredible.

 

Brad Werner  04:12

That's incredible. Actually, I'm really impressed to hear that my son's a brewer went to brew school in Germany the whole thing. I do like beer By the way, I just that the bourbon gets me to the dance faster.

 

Jeff York  04:23

I know I'm just giving you hard.

 

Brad Werner  04:26

But I do I actually really do like beer and actually a family tradition. My great grandfather came from Germany and opened up breweries in United States. That's kind of how he found his footing. So there's a long history in my family with that. But anyway, when you mentioned your friend Wade in the fire departments, um, I have a student right now currently working on an invention to help our first responders which hopefully when we bring Trent's in here, we can kind of talk about that and how that is playing out pretty much talk about bottom line, economics. He's counting one person you can help at a time and it's really cool, and I think we'll get there and little while,

 

Jeff York  05:00

let's go ahead and introduce our guests for this week. So I'm on the downside of doing creative distillation during the pandemic, obviously, is that we can actually go to all the great Colorado entrepreneurial ventures that we'd like to visit. The upside is we're able to bring in guests in from all over the country. It's really awesome. And we're gonna be definitely doing that more, bring back some I¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ alarms to come talk to us or now professors about their research. But I'm just I'm just ecstatic to have Trent Williams, who's Associate Professor at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University in Bloomington. here with us, Trent is a I think it's a it's actually sometimes we hesitate to call people a young scholar because they're not actually young, I think Trent's young, maybe he doesn't, but I think he is. And he does really, really in depth research, going into regions affected by disaster, and trying to understand how do you react to disaster and what can we learn from that? And how can we move forward. And I am just thrilled to have him here. He's someone I've known for many years, watched his career carefully. Great writer as well. And that's unfortunately a little bit rare in our profession. But we are going to be talking about his book that was co authored along with Dean shepherd. Spontaneous venturing. First of all, welcome, Trent.

 

Trent Williams  06:13

Yeah. Welcome. Wonderful. Yeah. So happy to be here. And thanks for bringing me on.

 

Jeff York  06:17

So we thought First off, before we start talking about the book, we could talk a little bit about just what we have seen. We did an episode a while back. And this is sort of a continuation discussion, entrepreneurial responses to both surviving COVID-19 as a business, and sort of pivoting and trying to figure out how to make your way as an entrepreneur, but also entrepreneurs, helping us find solutions and ways around some of the problems we're having. So Brad, did you have some example a man know that? Well, first of all, I

 

Brad Werner  06:47

mean, think about these times I think Trent can relate to this is that when you have real upheavals in kind of an everyday normal, it's a hotbed for entrepreneurship, and creative thinking. and small businesses and small deeds can turn into big things. And I think that that is really amazing. And what I was referencing earlier is a you know that I teach both engineers and business students, and I have a team that has developed a box, let's say it's the size of a packing box for books when you're moving, that has LEDs and it's going to sterilize use COVID mass for first responders, and they're actually going to launch at the boulder fire station, I believe in two weeks. So really, really cool. We're talking about taking these masks or any material that you think that could be infected, and within five minutes, it's clean and ready to go.

 

Jeff York  07:36

That's awesome. Just great. Yeah, I know you've been involved a lot in this to Brad, we've been doing a bunch of stuff to see you in the Deming center. Probably the thing that I've gotten most fired up about is 3d printing headbands for face shields. So I just did my first delivery of those. I think while I was reading trends book, it just really resonated with me this idea of taking action being something that that you have to do in order to feel better. Totally agree.

 

Brad Werner  08:03

I try. So why don't you kind of just give our, our listeners a little bit of your background and how you how you landed on this, this topic. And then we can kind of relate it and tie it into what's going on today.

 

Trent Williams  08:15

For me, as I began my doctoral studies, I was reflecting on an experience really, really an experience that I'd had throughout my childhood, which was interacting with my grandfather, who my grandfather was a well, he still is alive. He's going to turn 100 hopefully, this this October. And he's, yeah, so he's following World War Two, he was involved in the Berlin airlift. If, if you recall what that was, but what was the situation, essentially, West Berlin had been cut off from all resources. And it posed this massive challenge. Here, they were 2 million people completely isolated. The Russians thought there's no way that they'll wait this out. And nobody wanted world war three. And so the Allies decided on this novel idea of flying in food and goods. And literally kind of within just a few months, they invented ultimately, Air Cargo transportation, by air flighting all of the necessities in for these individuals. Anyway, my grandfather was a part of this. And that in and of itself is a fantastic innovation, which I would highly recommend everybody take a look at. There's a great book called the candy bombers, which talks about this whole scenario and all of the actors within that, that were very entrepreneurial. Anyway, as this was going on my grandfather being a very kind of explorative type of a person. He went out and started meeting with some of the Berlin kids were waiting by the airfield, and he ultimately ended up deciding to drop candy out of his airplane on a parachute, and was nearly court martialed. But instead of being court martialed, was asked to kind of amplify his efforts. And eventually Hershey's others donated candy and goods and people were making parachutes and he became known as the Berlin candy bar. And so this experience kind of growing up just always resonated with me. And as I started a PhD, I just thought, you know, I wonder, I wonder about all of these different things going on here, here's this worst possible scenario. And yet you have these incredible innovations, as you were saying earlier, Brad, about this resetting of the playing field gives you an opportunity, if you will, to try and push the needle forward, whether it be in a logistical innovation, which is what the airlift really was, and so on, and so forth. And so, along with my advisor, Dean, shepherd, and co author, I began exploring different environments where individuals, when faced with these very difficult circumstances, have reached down deep and produced phenomenal innovations. And also, as you were just talking about, you're taking these little steps that then evolved for many of the ventures that I've studied throughout my time. And so as this continues to evolve, I continue to do research, both in post crisis contexts in extreme poverty. But I also have a number of data collection efforts going on with immigrant entrepreneurs and Sweden, in Lebanon, in the Dominican Republic and other contexts. So that's kind of a broad background in terms of my perspective. And yes, I have been taking a look at a lot of COVID-19 related situations, but we can share some links later. But along with some professors here at the Kelley School of Business, you know, one or two days into our spring break, we decided to launch an idea Blitz, I teach a course on Google Ventures design sprint concepts. And we decided to do a weekend Blitz. And over just the course of a couple of days, we had over 200 individuals, get involved and do a blitz for you trying to generate some ideas for addressing COVID-19. And it really was a phenomenal experience, one to see these things played out that I had been researching and to be part of that. And also to see how some of them continue to evolve. So one of the ideas that has gone out and has kind of really began to expand is, you know, real heroes wear masks, designed to get masks to those on the front line and a number of others. But I'll kind of pause there. But this was kind of some of the thinking I had as it relates to what what can we do now, with the situation?

 

Brad Werner  12:19

It's amazing to see the resiliency of the human spirit, right? There probably is a segment of our population that goes into their rooms and pulls covers over their heads and waits for this to pass. And then there is another segment of the population. That's action oriented, right. You talked about first responders and people with mass are really our new heroes. Yeah. Incredible, the risks that they take, and the selflessness that they're putting forward. But I think that you also saw a roomful of that with the 200 folks that you just mentioned. Was there something that kind of resonated with you when you went through that experience with that crew?

 

Trent Williams  12:53

Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the biggest things, and we've just, we've just published some of this work that we did in a journal called business horizons, we have a paper that kind of summarizes some of these things that we did. But there was a moment in this in this interaction that really stood out to me, where one of the individuals, they said, I used to wake up every morning and look at the Johns Hopkins website, and just see what's the latest death count? And what's the latest case count. And it doesn't need much of an explanation to particularly how how psychologically challenging that could be that activity, that daily activity. And this individual then went on to say, now I wake up, you know, over the last three days, I wake up eager to focus on solutions and ideas and things that I can do, you know, we have all of these resources available to us, beyond getting out of our house beyond accessing financial resources. So really pushing themselves to dig deeper and figure out what what is it that I can do. And it really turned the organizers experience around from being a victim of this challenging crisis to being somebody who's coming to the rescue. And so for me, that individual change for those who were participating was very fulfilling to see as well as just seeing how willing people are to throw on the brakes as to what they were doing before. And then pivoting over to a different aspect. I just taught a live case the other day, in my MBA class on Chaco sandals and how they had this big idea to have a couple vans be going all these festivals and rolling out some of their new products as well as at the repair van. I mean, it was really fitting with the tacos, culture. And now all of a sudden, they were in a bind. And so they found ways through their social media accounts to engage Chekhov's nation, if you will, is what they call it, and to find ways to embrace other people. And so it's not, gosh, what can we do that we used to do? It's what what do these new platforms allow us to do, in ways that we couldn't have even approached? Similar to Jeff what Jeff was saying, I wouldn't be talking to you right now if we were bound to Boulder. So I'm grateful for that pivot. Yeah, I

 

Jeff York  15:02

think I think that's a great point is like seeing these companies pivot in and embrace the opportunity to do something different. So a local startup here called Mountain Standard, does outdoor clothing. I think what they've been doing is really interesting. They're doing movie nights every Friday. And they send out an email that has like five, sort of outdoor adventure films, because people are cooped up. But perhaps what's more interesting is, you know, like every retailer, they're absolutely struggling right now. And they've just started selling all of their clothing at cost. Now, is that a sustainable business? Well, no, of course not. But it at least gets them out of holding that inventory, and builds a relationship with their customers. And the response has been kind of crazy. They sent out this email, and then they had to send out an email like the next I think two days later, we're actually sold out of everything. We're gonna keep making clothes. That cost though, so we're just gonna keep doing this till we're past this. I just thought

 

Brad Werner  15:58

that it's amazing Jeff Glover. But and let's even take this one step farther, because we can, we can definitely talk about responses through these trying times. But what about if you use it as a reset for society to say, Hey, this is how I'd like the world to look moving forward. Normally, you really don't have opportunities like that in a lifetime. But now everything stopped, right, the air is getting cleaner, all those types of things. Right, we want this to look on the other side. And I try to go ahead, Jeff fourtrax, I'd love to hear kind of what you're thinking.

 

Jeff York  16:28

I literally just wrote something about that. And the conversation, I think came out yesterday. And this actually ties into the theme of our podcast, it's, as my first experience writing for them. And they usually write for these academic journals. And we work very hard and get our results dialed in. And, and, you know, we write these rather elaborate papers, as you know, Brad, and this is like a 700 word thought piece. And I have no idea if this is good or bad, or what normally is, but I've got like 8000, reads since yesterday. And that really was almost a wake up call for me of like COVID-19. And the examples of entrepreneurial action, we see it sort of act as a reset, and also allow us to see how entrepreneurs can help us move towards a better life. And how that sets the tone. I think the title is liner, the title is COVID-19 is a dress rehearsal for addressing climate change through entrepreneurship. I truly believe that we're seeing all kinds of solutions and ways that entrepreneurs don't solve the problem. I mean, I think sometimes some people think of souls too far like, oh, the group at Oxford that might have a I mean, I do think that's entrepreneurial, they might have a vaccine by September maybe. I do think that's entrepreneurial action. But I think we do ourselves a disservice and entrepreneurship community, we try to talk about entrepreneurship as a cure for everything. And I think that's why I really love about Trent's book is it's not about it is about entrepreneurship, but not as a tool to go launch a five x exit, you know, within some time period, that it's about using entrepreneurship as a tool to rebuild in the wake of disaster. And what could be more applicable than that right now. I mean, I've wanted to have turned on forever, but like, yeah, who could we have on? just occurred to me? So

 

Brad Werner  18:15

when I looked at his book, I thought entrepreneurship and grit. I mean, that was kind of my real takeaway, right? You These are tough people. The selfless people, Trent, right, that you referenced in your book, I'm really just trying to help, in a sense, their neighbor, first thing, let's just our neighbor, and then let's see what happens then.

 

Trent Williams  18:33

Yeah, I think that that's one of the things that's been inspiring to me, and doing this work is kind of building off both of these topics. One is, yeah, people are eager to build back but not to build back, as was before, but the phrase is very common build back better. Very rarely do we have a situation where all of these barriers are knocked down, and you take a step back and you try and think about systematically, what do we need to do? Maybe if this entire village burned to the ground, which was the case that I saw in a town called flowerdale in Australia, the entire village burned to the ground? So do we put every single home built the exact same way in the exact same location? No, let's build back better maybe we could build bushfire proof homes that are more environmentally friendly as well, and then draw upon the natural features of the environment to protect against future bushfires, and to have more autonomous homes. And so those were the types of things that we observed. But I think you're you're tapping into a really important point as well is, you know, in some of the research I've looked at, some people try to I hate using this term, but I'll use it, you know, boil the ocean, they try and solve all problems for all people. And when I was down in Haiti, this is one of the things that I saw is, you know, well, what are you working on? Well, we want to eliminate housing issues in Haiti. It's like, wow, okay. Are we want to eliminate the orphan problem in Haiti. Now, those are those are very serious problems, massive, massive problems, and yet the ones that were more successful, were these micro communities. neighbors who were saying, Well, hey, what do you do? Well, you plant peanuts. Well, this is great. So will you supply me your peanuts, and I'll make a unique nut butter. And I'll work with a baker down down the street. And now guess what, the children in our area are getting their basic nourishment every day. And so it's sustainable, because it's within the community, they can continue to help one another. They're not sitting in waiting for some big donor to come in from the outside. And so they're they're focused on the resources that they have, and the scale is appropriate. It's not going to be getting venture capital backing down in Haiti, and expanding across the globe. But for me, seeing that kind of in between, you know, it's not boiling the ocean, but it's also not something else. We saw just also in the in the spirit of the topic of this discussion, some guy selling alcohol out of an antifreeze bottle by the ounce. In a tent city, you know, it's not that either, right? And so it's somewhere in between the extremely micro economy of resale and this macro, we're going to solve all things in Haiti. But one of the most common things that some people say when it comes to a crisis, and it hits the news, and you think, Oh, yes, you know, this is awful, but it's the people will talk about people are going down, they're breaking into stores, they're looting, they're doing these kinds of things. And yeah, those those make the news. But all the disaster scholar researchers have found this is the extreme minor outcome of crises, what crises unleash is what they often say it unleashed, it unleashes the altruistic in human beings and their desire to help one another. Sure, it's sexy to put it on the news and say, Look at these store getting looted. But the vast majority of people are reaching out to those next to them, and trying to aid one another.

 

Brad Werner  21:43

I try to have a question for you some kind of listening to that. And I just absolutely love what you're saying. And I do think that our sensibilities are 100% aligned here. So Jeff, thanks for introducing your tracks. But when we talk about what do we want this to look like, on the other side, people may think that this is driven by politicians, and kind of top down this is what we think everything should look like. But I'm sensing from you that the way that things look better is actually a collaborative effort at a local level, and it expands kind of in their

 

Trent Williams  22:14

universe. I would agree with that. And I like to get Jeff's perspective on this too. Because I think one of the challenges that I'm often confronted with myself personally, as well as when I talk to, especially economists, and a lot of the economists I speak to, they say, Well, hey, look, you're talking about a temporarily failed state in a well developed country, or in a un classified, least developed country in Haiti, you know, these are failed states. So you're saying we should start building from the bottom up? But doesn't that undermine institutional controls from the outside? I guess for me, my answer is, well, you've got to start building somewhere. And if you can build in communities and demonstrate, if you will, proof of concept, from a community development perspective, and saying, look, in these particular communities and cities, this is working these interactions between these various stakeholders. And so many of the people I spoke to in Haiti, for example, they said, Look, if this could be replicated in villages across Haiti, wouldn't all of Haiti be strong? Now, inevitably, you're going to have people who are self interested at various levels, and that's going to happen. But I think if it becomes those on the ground, who are not just victims waiting for somebody from the outside to impose some sort of uniform institutional answer across all of these different communities, if instead they're saying, here are the things we have, we are victims, but we also are not identifying solely as victims, but as producers of solutions, but I'm not ignoring that potential challenge of this tension between bottom up community led development and top down infrastructural economic stability that you obviously need to find some middle ground there, especially when it comes to rebuilding or restructuring. Yeah,

 

23:59

john, do you think?

 

Jeff York  24:01

Well, I think what you're hitting on trend is is dead on. And I think it's the important perspective that entrepreneurship research and scholarship brings, that is different than almost any other field, not to keep talking about it. But like, so I wrote this article, well, two days ago, and now I've got people posting, climate change can never be solved under a capitalist system. Like, wow, that's an interesting point. It's not what I wrote about. I don't think entrepreneurship is inherently capitalist or socialist, or Dallas, or Christian or any of those things. Entrepreneurship is the creation and discovery of new products, markets and services, and the implications of doing that for both economic and social outcomes. So

 

Brad Werner  24:49

hyper tribalism is like slipping into your work. Is that what you're saying?

 

24:53

What's that?

 

Brad Werner  24:54

Try it seems seems like there's some tribalism that's kind of trying to invade your your your world. No, I

 

Jeff York  25:01

don't think so I think it's just a perspective that people that study entrepreneurship, and take it seriously as a field of scholarly research, have a bit of a different perspective than economists. Or than those that study, you know, social welfare organizations or NGOs, or politics or anything like that. It's just a different field. And I think Trent's insights in this book about look, you know, normally put words in your mouth. So I'm guessing doing translate. We're not saying there's no role for centralization or central coordination, and moving past disasters. It's not everything boils down to entrepreneurial action, but a lot of it could. And we really overlooked that a lot of the time. And it's basically the same argument I'm making about climate change. And it's also the same argument that Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom made about solving environmental collapse, as well as that you as the problems get bigger, it's harder and harder to coordinate and have unified action across multiple parties. And when when you do that you trade off in a major way, knowing whether or not it's going to work. So the wonderful thing about Trump's book I was reading, I was like, Brad's gonna love this, because, you know, there's a heading in the last chapter. So what, who cares? And then the answer, so I don't have to, like, you know, try to spin his book or anything about that. It's really into actionable insights. But But why read it? trade? It really resume is entrepreneurship research. If like, yeah, you guys are not describing just your research, which is excellent. But also, I don't want to say tribalism, Brad, but an ontological view of the world, or a view of the world that most entrepreneurship scholars have that we should favor. And

 

Brad Werner  26:43

that's why I'm here because we're actually want to talk about what can be actionable for real entrepreneurs on the ground, people that are hurting right now. People that want to say, Hey, you know what, I want to get involved, I want to help my neighbor, I want to help my community. And then we'll see where it goes. And try.

 

Jeff York  26:58

entrepreneurs, which is what I love about Trump's book is Yeah,

 

Brad Werner  27:01

what would you say to those folks?

 

Trent Williams  27:03

First and foremost is Yeah, I agree there there certainly as a role, you know, in the second chapter of the book, we talk about how and we are, to be fair, pretty hard on the command and control approach. And the reason is, and I'll be honest, these were conversations we had with one another, as we said, a whole host of other research has talked about how important it is to control everything. So we're going to be a little bit harder on that literature, because there there isn't a strong enough voice there. And yet, we definitely do not say there is no role, we just say that it's literally impossible when you have these collapses, due to disasters, for any Central Party to manage all of the various needs and needs are going to be diverse. They're going to vary by location. And so then I think the big question becomes, yes, so so what do we do? And I think one of the first things we can do as investors in ideas, whether they are volunteers, is, first of all, ask ourselves and really spend some time on this, what does it actually mean to help? You know, I think sometimes we assume, because I did blank, I helped, or because I'm thinking of doing blank, I'm helping. And if we don't ever challenge that assumption, then we may actually end up causing some more harm than we do good. lots of examples from some of the data collection, I did one example an entire community in Australia thought it'd be fantastic to help an area that would have been devastated. So they load up a bunch of their old clothes, their old bikes, you know, fill an entire semi full of all of these things and shut them down. They're, you know, they say, yay, we helped this was so wonderful. And then, you know, the people receive them. They don't even have homes, they don't have shelter. And now they're getting, you know, little little Johnny's used shirt, and, like, Oh, God, and some people

 

Brad Werner  28:53

cleaned out the mirages. And the other people, in a sense, received a load of junk that wasn't helpful to them.

 

Trent Williams  29:00

Exactly. And so they're posting on Facebook, and I'm not being hard on that. I don't want to be too hard on these people. I'm just saying, was it a good thing that you did? Yes. Were your motives good? Yes. Did it help? Probably not. Actually, now they've got to get rid of a semi full of miscellaneous used items. other cases of Oh, we heard they need beds. And so all of a sudden, there's an entire warehouse full of mattresses, and there countless stories of piles of food, mattresses, clothing, other things going to waste. And so one of the one of the chapters of the book is chapter four, we talk a lot about when you have a response that needs to be customized, it needs to be appropriate in speed, so not not too slow, and not too fast. It needs to be the appropriate scale. If I send you 10,000 mattresses and you only need four, that's an inappropriate scale. So the key component ends up being customization, which, for all of us thinking from an entrepreneurial perspective, what does customization mean, it has to be local and it has to To be tapping into the knowledge of those particular areas. And so we talked about the power of local pneus. And then the ability of those who are often perceived as helpless victims. And yes, some are helpless victims, and they need absolute rescuing. But the vast majority of the problems that are going to be addressed in the immediate aftermath of the crisis, and even as it progresses, is going to be those who were impacted, they know what they need, they know about how to get different properties, different needs, that are that are in the area, they're going to be better at having their finger on that pulse. And they're going to be better at directing outside resources, people desperate to fund ideas that that are actually getting traction. And so I would say how can we be better at identifying and cultivating community based responses to crises and funding those and helping them get off the ground and then helping them pivot as well, you know, you've done a great job of getting food and other types of goods to people, we've passed that stage. Now, can we help you close things down? We think about the temporality of ventures as well, often we think, how can we start it, we don't want it to fail. But maybe there are certain types of ventures that need to stop when they've achieved their mission, rather than continuing to suck up resources that can be more efficiently

 

Brad Werner  31:16

distributed throughout the economy. It's really, really interesting. On the other hand, or not, on the other hand, but in that parallel, some local responses could go viral. Right, but you don't start with the intent to go viral. You need to focus on who you're trying to help is what I'm discerning from what you're saying, focused on your neighbors in your community. And then if something happens to go viral, awesome, right, but it shouldn't be your goal.

 

Trent Williams  31:38

Yeah, correct. It's, it's how can we do something that we know is touching the need, we know that this resource is not being wasted? resource being our time, our limited financial resources when we're engaging and venturing? And the best way to see that as you're launching the idea? And I think this is where it relates heavily to prototypical entrepreneurship, right? We don't just say, I've got an idea. Well, who's your target market? The world? You know, we don't be Don't say that. Yeah,

 

Brad Werner  32:09

I hear. I hear it every day.

 

Trent Williams  32:11

Exactly. But yeah, we say, okay, great for the world. That's fantastic. But who might buy your first product? You know, what do you mean, I want the whole world to be so this. Yeah, this is where it's very, very similar to that aspect. It's what is the need? And it's, well, I know the needs in the Bloomington Indiana area appear to be this at this point in time, and then have been willing to then say, guess what, that need changed. We are all going to pivot together,

 

Jeff York  32:43

as you're talking about that trend to occurs to me is that like, I think we often overlook the role of culture and these things, and especially on an international level, but but even on more localized level. I mean, I think the folks embedded in a community know best, what are the kinds of interventions that are most likely to actually work here, and people can get behind me get excited about a lot of things. But I like the idea of a bias towards action, and a way for waiting for resources. Can you talk a little bit about how you guys got to that? I mean, did you just, I guess, if I was going to be a skeptic, I'd say, Well, I'm in a disaster. I mean, of course, you know, I don't have resources. And, and I know we all as teachers of entrepreneurship, hear that all the time, like, asking your students, what's your biggest problem? Oh, we don't have enough resources.

 

Brad Werner  33:27

I just never think that's the problem. I call bullshit on that. I'm gonna say those are felonies, right? The people that know

 

Jeff York  33:33

just invest in them read and like, No,

 

Brad Werner  33:35

no, come on. If there's a problem, you could probably close your eyes, all of us on this call right now, close your eyes. And think of the classrooms you have, you know, the people that will stand up, if a disaster happens outside the window, and you know, the people that will actually want to pull up the bedsheet over their heads. And so in a sense, maybe there's a piece of DNA, or there's there's some sort of personal motivator that has people rise to the challenge. And all of us are talking about our real heroes in the frontlines, the nurses and doctors, first responders, all those folks doing that. They don't consider themselves Heroes is the thing, right? They're just doing their job. They're just because they're doing their job because they want to help people.

 

Trent Williams  34:16

Absolutely. So I would agree this this bias for action. And you're right, I mean, we're saying we are used to hearing, Oh, if only I had, then I would. And that's such a dangerous phrase, because whatever you fill in that blank, I mean, it's just going to delay any kind of action. And what is that going to do? It's going to delay getting feedback as to if you've even thought of something useful at all. And so when the needs are even more pressing, alleviating of suffering, there has to be a bias for action to figure out what what is it that we can do. So this made me think of just two quick examples. One in the Australia context, there was a woman who started an organization where I wouldn't even call it an organization at the start. She basically was just saying Here's a church, let's go to the churchyard, and let's collect food and provide food and those types of things for people. She didn't have any resources, but people just started emerging out of nowhere, her neighbors saying, oh, what do you need, because people wanted to help. And so when they see that there's some sort of organization, there's some sort of specific focus, those who are around and these are the victims, it's no, it's not yet people from the outside. And then as time moved along, she started seeing other needs. And she ended up focusing on women's mental health, and the various types of challenges that they were facing. But the goal was never from the beginning to launch a women's mental health type of organization, or, I mean, she was collecting generators and those kinds of things. And then I think of another example, when I when I went to Haiti, one of the most frequent and yet and surprising and also saddening, questions I got at first was, they'd say, what's your thing said, What do you mean? What's my thing? Well, everybody that comes to Haiti has a thing. So you know, what's in the back of your truck, you know, that you're gonna back up to our area and tell us that we need? I said, Well, I'm, I'm sorry to say, I don't have a thing. In fact, I'm here to listen to you. And they said, so let me be clear you you don't want to hear about what others had to say. You want to hear what we had said, Yes. They said, Well, this is funny. Nobody ever asked us this question before. And they said, patients did a lot. In fact, we did so much, and nobody ever hears about it. And then they walked me over to this house that had been built out of sandbags. And they said, this is a project that we worked on, and they had built a school for orphans. And then they organized to have locals come in and teach at the school. And since all school, you have to pay for it over in Haiti, the teachers children could be schooled for free, you know, so you're just hearing about this story. And these are these are people who had the, they are at the epicenter of the 2010 earthquake. So in any case, you're taking action, doing things with the resources you have on hand, whether it be network or physical resources. And then people just seem to be attracted to that, because they see, they know who you are, and they see the thing moving forward, and then it can go viral.

 

Brad Werner  37:10

Yep, enthusiasm can breed enthusiasm. Right?

 

Jeff York  37:13

Correct. Well, the other kind of powerful thing that I got in the book reading the stories in was that when we do that, as individuals, yeah, we help solve the disaster, we engage in spontaneous venturing, and go and try and do that. But we actually benefit as well, because we stop seeing ourselves as victims, and start seeing ourselves as part of a community that's going to come through this problem stronger than before better than before with new relationships and new ways of doing things.

 

Brad Werner  37:43

I totally agree. And oh, sorry, go ahead. Try.

 

Trent Williams  37:45

I'm just going to add to that saying one of the things that was most surprising, Jeff, from that, that particular study that we were doing that you actually review, that earliest version of that particular study when he first met. But one of the interesting things we found is that those who had resources, you know, they had the human capital, the education, the work experience, they'd started ventures in the past, those who took action, yes, they had these positive outcomes, those who didn't have the resources, and still took some kind of action had more positive psychological, those who had the resources and did not apply them, they ended up having the worst psychological outcomes. And so it was kind of interesting, you had capability to help others. And yet, for whatever reason, you know, some of those mechanisms we could continue to explore, but not using potential resources on hand sends you into this state where you're just trying to hold on to whatever you have left, you're not expanding mentally to thinking of growing the resources you have on hand, you're just conserving. So this conservation of resources, which ends up leading to this, our data, this is extrapolating now beyond my data, but we were assuming that it was that that leads to almost this vicious cycle downward where it's, you know, control, conserve, conserve, conserve, conserve until you're just in a very disappointing place. But if you take action and go, then it's growing, growing, growing, expanding.

 

Brad Werner  39:12

We also think history is a great equalizer to right. In the moment, people do things, but over time when it gets reviewed, a generation or so down the road. I think that's really a good stand up. I'd love to have you back. I know Jeff would love to have you back as well. We just got the thumbs up that that it's we got to cut this off. But really a pleasure meeting you today. I think that you've actually provided a lot of insight. I'm so thrilled to have been on this, this conversation with with the two of you and Jeff, what do you think?

 

Jeff York  39:42

You asked me? Yeah, oh, I love Trump before today. So yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, again, trying to take seriously my role of distillation, correct me, but I think the things that we could talk about just to be really clear, are coming out of COVID 19 it's a little different than the traditional disasters you look at. We can't bond together physically. But the miraculous thing, in my opinion, anyway, is that we have tools, we have ways we all have resources, we all have useful means and something to contribute. And even though maybe we would like to believe our centralized efforts are going to solve this, I sure hope so at some point, but it's tough not to be skeptical. But I think that's a downward spiral as well, instead of thinking about how can we take action in our communities, amongst our networks, and even grow our networks and our communities beyond to try to help each other as much as we can. And if we can do that, we'll change our own mindset from that of the victim of this horrible time to you know, I'm doing something worthwhile, and who knows, perhaps even more worthwhile than what I was doing before this happened.

 

Brad Werner  40:56

Amen. And I would say, you know, what the real action item is help your neighbor start there and keep going. And growing up to give you the last word.

 

Trent Williams  41:05

I agree, I thank you for for those comments. I mean, it's delightful to be speaking with you. And I do think what makes COVID-19 very unique is it's a slowly unfolding crisis, often the crisis happens over and then we have all of this literature on what to do in the stages of recovery following a crisis. And yet, this is unfolding slowly. But I agree that that uncertainty is going to be reduced at some point. But right now, it's it's there. But what we can do is turn to our neighbors into our communities, what really a return to our roots of you know, in the past, and lifting where we stand, if you will, as best as we can, together as communities to try and address some of these, these outcomes, but very delighted to be here with you. And if the book is included in the notes, it is open access, so people can access it for free. And wait a second, I paid 10 bucks. Yeah, I made sure to advertise my version at the appropriate time.

 

Jeff York  42:07

You can get for open access. And you know, again, the mission of our show is to try to distill entourage of research insights into action. And it turns done that in his own work, which is very commendable, so I knew, I knew this would be Brad's favorite work we probably talked about. But anyway, thank you so much for being here. Trent Brad, it's great to see you as always, you know, thank you. We're gonna get through this, try to figure out where you can help and what you can do and just do the best you can to think of yourself as an entrepreneur creating our own solutions rather than someone who's a victim. You guys feel much better. Alright, so you can find this and all of our other episodes including our previous episode as well. It also was a special look at entrepreneurs box COVID-19 at the Deming Center website, that's very easy. Just type into Google will come up is the Deming Center at the elite school of business of the University of Colorado.

 

Trent Williams  43:02

And if you would like to connect with me, feel free to just enter Trent Williams into your search engine, Indiana University. If you don't have the last part you will end up with an offensive tackle who is not me different Trent Williams, or you can search for Trenton a Williams in Google Scholar.

 

43:23

Thanks, guys.

 

43:24

Thanks for Thanks. Thanks again. You