Hardships in the Formative Years Result in Improved Entrepreneurial Acumen

While navigating through impediments or sufferings right in the early years of life is nothing short of difficult, this, however, might equip individuals to cope with challenges better, in the long run. Drawing from this central idea, a recent study by eminent NUS Business School faculty members Ivan Png and Chu Junhong along with Yi Junjijan from the National School of Development, Peking University, has revealed that hardships in the formative years might result to an improved entrepreneurial acumen. The outcomes of the study, which have been featured in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), are accorded focal importance and are elaborated at length in this article by NUS Business School.

Employing the Great Famine of China as a common point of hardship, the study conducted, underlines a rise in instances of improved entrepreneurial acumen across regions that were more critically affected than the others. However, while the results denote that hardship indeed can amount to improved entrepreneurial acumen, however, these findings are not uniform across the different spectrums of gender, the article states. Even though the troubles and difficulties associated with the famine equipped both men and women to deal with future challenges potently, it however still continued the dominant trend of men owning the majority of ventures, a factor that should be taken into account while discerning the causes contributing to improved entrepreneurial acumen and employing them in formulating policies in the global context, the article confirms.