01. Introduction

1.1 Motivation and Background

We are living in the ever greatest era of entrepreneurship fueled by the game-changing socioeconomic backgrounds and growing ubiquity of the technology. 2015 was an another record-breaking year in startups scene in United Kingdom, with more than 600,000 companies to launch, according to Startup Britian. In Montana, United State, 540 new entrepreneurs born per month for every 100,000 adults in this year (Kauffman Foundation Report 2015). It seems that more people want to live for the satisfaction of doing what they believe instead of being employed for somebody that they don’t really care.

But not everyone who discard “job work” mentality successfully manages themselves to make an entrepreneurial action. The gap between desire and action is huge. 9 out of 10 startups fails but what about the one that has not tried, considering failure is another term of the experiment. While the availability of technologies enables starting a business to be technically all possible, anxiety of uncertainty often stops us moving forward what we are interested in.

Let’s talk about myself. I’m a master student of Digital Media Management, Hyper Island where I had entered with an anticipation for digital skill-set but came out with regained dream of the entrepreneur. Like many other entrepreneurs in an initial stage, I’m opening my eyes with one big question every morning— how to manage the great uncertainty in a new opportunity. If to reduce the uncertainty was the biggest effort that I’ve done for my job before, now it is to face the uncertainty.

“People maintain their hope & optimism despite or because of the uncertainty.” — Dale E. Brashers

Every action is inherently uncertain, and uncertainty is an inevitable attribute in entrepreneurship (Jeffery S. McMullen and Dean A. Shepherd, 2006). Then should entrepreneurs strive to decrease the uncertainty all the time? According to the communication researcher Brashers, uncertainty is cognitive, something that even can be positive and thereby needs to be ‘managed’. So here is my question: If the uncertainty is manageable, what uncertainties and how to be managed to move forward?

Initial Research Question

• What uncertainty the early stage of entrepreneurs encounter and how they manage that ambiguity?

Understanding various types of uncertainty enhances our ability to describe its influences on behavior and to develop strategies for improvement. (D E. Brashers, 2001). Therefore, my first question is to identify the great uncertainties.

• What makes entrepreneurs act despite uncertainty? Do entrepreneurs perceive less uncertainty or/and have more willingness to bear uncertainty in their entrepreneurial action?

In an academic field, there are two mainstream in entrepreneurship theories that explain the role that uncertainty plays in preventing or enacting the entrepreneurial activities: (1) the amount of perceived uncertainty and (2) the willingness to bear uncertainty(Jeffery S. McMullen and Dean A. Shepherd, 2006). I would like to see which roles of uncertainty plays bigger in startup entrepreneurship today.

• Do the design thinking and business development tools help the early-stage startup to reduce the uncertainty?

My key take away from the Hyper Island is collaborative tool from design thinking framework and business development methodology that facilitates information and decision flow within a team and enables the team to keeps track of the current state of product/service development. Poor communication and situation awareness may inhibit the efficient flow of information. I would validate this impact in actual startup team level. Based on the claim of Gudykunst that “Mindfulness moderates the process of the anxiety of uncertainty management and induces the communication effectiveness as an outcome”, I will examine the several tools that I learned in Hyper Island and other academic sources to see their impact on efficient information flow and consequently on the uncertainty management.

1.2 Expectation

Intervention
Beside to the literature review, I will investigate on the above research questions with two subtype of industry research project. The first project will be an in-depth field research in one startup company, focusing on the research question no.1&3. I will intervene in the new product buildup process of the company by providing multidisciplinary framework and tools, and draw finding and analysis on the uncertainty management in early stage startup. The second project is the semistructured interview with entrepreneurs over the globe that designed for research question no.1&2. By interviewing a variety of startup entrepreneurs, I will discover the uncertainties encountered by early stage entrepreneurs and their management strategy.

Audience
This ongoing project is designed to benefit the prospective and early stage of entrepreneurs who want to solve the complex problem in the various scale: from micro business to scalable startup. The conclusion to be drawn in this study also can target the entrepreneurship training industry, including startup incubators and entrepreneur institution. However, this study would not cover the business strategy, or practical strategies on how to set-up, organize and run a startup.

Aim
The aim of this project is to uncover what uncertainty entrepreneurs encounter in their early stage and how they deal with the ambiguity in the decision for entrepreneurial action. This will lead to implication on how to move forward with new frightening opportunities.

A note on terminology
The terms Startup, early stage of enterprise/business are referring a company that is in the first stage of its operations (less than 5 years old) but projecting themselves as the game changer by possessing high scalability in their business model.