The language and body language of entrepreneurs: How verbal and non-verbal metaphors are used to persuade investors to fund new ventures.

在全球经济危机之后，越来越多的人将创业视为在公共资金稀缺的情况下提高经济绩效的一种手段，最近的讨论集中在政府应制定有助于发展创业活动的政策这一观点。政府支持创业者的一个关键方式是帮助他们更成功地获得启动或扩大创业所需的财政资源。创业者(尤其是科技企业)在吸引资源提供者参与他们的想法方面可能会面临相当大的挑战，因为缺乏对能力的切实预测，也没有证据表明企业最终会成功。现有的创业研究侧重于两种主要方法，即认知视角和制度视角，但这两种视角都不容易转移到实际的创业培训中。认知视角着眼于企业家的人格特征，这些特征被认为是与生俱来的，并且在企业家的一生中相对稳定，因此几乎没有为其他个人提供发展的机会。机构视角突显了创业者利用的文化符号(例如顶尖商学院的教育或高素质的创始团队)，以使企业在关键群体看来可信。这种方法没有解释那些不符合这些文化接受的标准的人如何也能获得资金。这个项目将使用PI最近在一家高影响力的美国学术期刊上发表的新理论观点，通过关注企业家用来说服投资者支持他们的新企业的语言和肢体语言，提供对他们社会背景下的企业家更全面的理解。如果企业家的沟通技能被视为获得资金的核心，那么这些行为就可以在其他人身上被识别、评估和培养。与终端用户约克郡连接(Connect York Kshire)合作(他们参与了设计，并将帮助实施和传播调查结果)，将确定30名技术企业家参与该项目。在项目期间，将进行三项研究。研究1(对向投资者进行录像带推销的语言分析)将深入了解企业家使用的语言和肢体语言的形式、频率和功能。研究2(深入的视觉人种学研究)和研究3(实验研究)将提供这些策略是否对投资者决策产生影响的信息。首先，这项研究有可能为参与企业家培训的政策制定者和专业协会提供相当大的战略利益。在其他影响活动中，最先进的培训材料将在利兹企业中心、Connect Networks内开发和使用，并在初创企业英国发布在网上。其次，这个项目可能会对创业领域产生重大影响，因为私营部门的新理论方法有可能克服创业中现有的两个主要观点的问题，并使之协调一致。第三，该项目在数据收集(视觉人种学)和分析(采用语言学的技术)方面采用了创新的方法。该项目将把这些方法纳入管理界的主流，并将通过培训新的研究人员掌握这些技术来建设能力。PI的研究经验和经验丰富的导师的支持将有助于确保该项目在道德上是合理的，在分析上是强有力的，并得到良好的管理。她之前在视觉方法方面的工作，她在分析手势和语言方面的专业知识，以及她与学术界和实践者的联系，意味着PI处于开展这项工作的理想位置，并确保它对学术界和政策产生尽可能高的影响。

In the wake of the global economic crisis entrepreneurship is increasingly seen as a means to enhance economic performance in the context of scarce public funds and recent discussions have centred on the idea that governments should develop policy which is instrumental in developing entrepreneurial activity. One critical way governments can support entrepreneurs is helping them to be more successful in acquiring financial resources needed to initiate or expand their venture. Entrepreneurs (particularly technology ventures) are likely to face considerable challenges in engaging resource providers in their ideas given the lack of tangible predictors of competence or evidence that the venture will eventually be successful.Existing research in entrepreneurship focuses on two main approaches "the cognitive" and "the institutional" perspectives, but neither lends itself easily to being transferred to practical entrepreneurship training. The cognitive perspective focuses on personality traits of entrepreneurs which are seen as innate and relatively stable over the life of the entrepreneur so offer little opportunity for development in other individuals. The institutional perspective highlights the cultural symbols entrepreneurs employ (such as an education from a top business school or a high calibre founding team) to make the venture seem credible to key groups. This approach does not explain how those who do not meet these culturally accepted norms can also achieve funding.This project will employ the PI's new theoretical perspective recently published in a high impact US academic journal which offers a more integrative understanding of the entrepreneur within their social context by focusing on the language and body language entrepreneurs use to persuade investors to support their new venture. If the communication skills of entrepreneurs are viewed as central to the achievement of funding, it follows that these behaviours can be identified, assessed and developed in others. Working with one end-user Connect Yorkshire (who have been involved in the design and will help implement and disseminate the findings) 30 technology entrepreneurs will be identified to take part in the project. Over the period of the project three studies will be conducted. Study 1 (a linguistic analysis of videotaped pitches to investors) will develop insights into the form, frequency and function of language and body language used by entrepreneurs. Study 2 (an in-depth visual ethnographic study) and Study 3 (an experimental study) will provide information on whether these tactics have an impact on investor's decisions.The potential impact of this research is three-fold. First this research has the potential to offer considerable strategic benefit to policy-makers and professional associations involved in the training of entrepreneurs. Among other impact activities, state-of-the-art training materials will be developed and used within Leeds Enterprise Centre, Connect Networks and posted on-line at Start-Up Britain. Secondly, this project is likely to have significant impact on the field of entrepreneurship as the PI's new theoretical approach has the potential to overcome the problems with and reconcile the two existing major perspectives in entrepreneurship. Thirdly the project uses innovative approaches to data collection (visual ethnography) and analysis (techniques adapted from linguistics). This project will mainstream these methods within the management community and will build capacity through training new researchers in these techniques. The PI's research experience and support of experienced mentors will help ensure the project is ethically sound, analytically strong and well-managed. Previous work on visual methods, her expertise in analysing gesture and language and her academic and practitioner contacts, means the PI is ideally placed to carry out this work and ensure it has the highest possible impact on both academia and policy.