Possessive Individualism in Entrepreneurship: A Convenient Lie

Watching a rugby try can be a thrilling experience. The player who scores the try often gets the spotlight, but the reality is that their success is a cumulative effort of the entire team. Skills, synergy, and the emergent opportunity all play crucial roles. This collective dynamic made me reflect on the dominant narrative in entrepreneurship—the concept of possessive individualism.

The Illusion of the Sole Entrepreneur

Entrepreneurship models, particularly prescriptive ones like the lean startup or traditional business planning, often glorify the individual entrepreneur as the central decision-maker. Even the expertise-framing in Saras Sarasvathy’s effectuation approach leans on the idea of the solitary entrepreneur’s cognitive capacities. This perspective aligns with the concept of possessive individualism, as articulated by Macpherson (1962; 2010).

Possessive individualism posits that capacities, beliefs, desires, and other attributes are the sole possessions of the individual. The individual is viewed as a self-contained unit, ‘essentially the proprietor of their own person or capacities,’ owing nothing to society for them. This reductionistic framing is convenient for theoretical studies, but it disregards the complexity and interdependence of real-world entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship Beyond the Individual

In practice, entrepreneurship rarely aligns with this idealized notion. Cognition, decision-making, and expertise are often distributed and extended beyond the individual. Take, for example, Donald Trump hiring the best programmers or Richard Branson overcoming his accounting struggles by employing skilled accountants. Neither needed to master these domains themselves. Instead, they leveraged distributed expertise, enabling outcomes far superior to what any single individual could achieve.

Similarly, technological tools have surpassed human expertise in many specialized fields. For instance, modern accounting software can outperform even the most experienced accountants in specific tasks. This demonstrates that entrepreneurial cognition and decision-making often involve external entities—people, institutions, and artifacts—that function as extensions of the entrepreneur’s mind (Clark & Chalmers, 1998).

Distributed Decision-Making in Complex Domains

Real-world entrepreneurial decisions are inherently distributed. In contexts involving multiple stakeholders with diverse, and often conflicting, beliefs and goals, decision-making is a shared process (Charles et al., 1997; 1999). Expertise is not confined to the entrepreneur but is distributed across individuals, institutions, and tools (Edwards, 2010). Entrepreneurs don’t need to master every domain; they need to navigate and leverage these distributed resources effectively.

For example, an entrepreneur might succeed without personal expertise in finance, programming, or law if they assemble a team of skilled professionals, access supportive institutions, or benefit from a well-connected network. This highlights the critical role of context, collaboration, and resource accessibility in entrepreneurial success.

Entrepreneurship in Complex Systems

Entrepreneurs operate in dynamic environments characterized by interconnected and evolving challenges. Russell Ackoff (1978) described these as “messes”—systems of interrelated problems. In such contexts, decision-making cannot be isolated or linear. Instead, it requires adaptive strategies and collaborative problem-solving (Bennet & Bennet, 2008).

Entrepreneurship, therefore, is not an individual endeavor but a complex, distributed process. The possessive individualism narrative oversimplifies this reality, perpetuating a convenient lie that undermines the importance of collaboration, context, and the broader systems within which entrepreneurship unfolds.

Conclusion

The notion of the lone entrepreneur as a heroic figure is a myth that fails to capture the distributed and extended nature of entrepreneurial decision-making. Recognizing the collective dynamics and systemic interdependencies in entrepreneurship not only provides a more accurate understanding but also paves the way for more inclusive and effective entrepreneurial practices.

Citations

• Macpherson, Crawford Brough. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke. (1962; 2010).
• Clark, Andy, and David Chalmers. “The Extended Mind.” Analysis 58, no. 1 (1998): 7-19.
• Schneeweiss, Christoph. Distributed Decision Making. Springer Science & Business Media, 2012.
• Charles, Cathy, Amiram Gafni, and Tim Whelan. “Decision-Making in the Physician and Patient Encounter: Revisiting the Shared Treatment Decision-Making Model.” Social Science & Medicine 49, no. 5 (1999): 651-661.
• Charles, Cathy, Amiram Gafni, and Tim Whelan. “Shared Decision-Making in the Medical Encounter: What Does It Mean? (or It Takes at Least Two to Tango).” Social Science & Medicine 44, no. 5 (1997): 681-692.
• Edwards, Anne. Being an Expert Professional Practitioner: The Relational Turn in Expertise. Springer Science & Business Media, 2010.
• Ackoff, Russell Lincoln. The Art of Problem Solving Accompanied by Ackoff’s Fables. (1978).
• Bennet, Alex, and David Bennet. “The Decision-Making Process in a Complex Situation.” In Handbook on Decision Support Systems 1, pp. 3-20. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2008.