Inspired or foolhardy: sensemaking, confidence and entrepreneurs' decision-making.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of confidence in how both new and experienced entrepreneurs interpret and make sense of their business environment to inform decision-making. We illustrate our conceptual arguments with descriptive results from a large-scale (n = 6289) survey on entrepreneurs' perception of business performance and their decisions taken at a time of uncertainty in an economic downturn. Quantitative findings are stratified along experiential lines to explore heterogeneity in entrepreneurial decision-making and directly inform our conceptual arguments, while qualitative data from open questions are used to explain the role of confidence. Newer entrepreneurs are found to be more optimistic in the face of environmental risk, which impacts on their decision-making and innovative capabilities. However, the more experienced entrepreneurs warily maintain margin and restructure to adapt to environmental changes. Instead of looking directly at the confidence of individuals, we show how confidence impacts sensemaking, and ultimately, decision-making. These insights inform research on the behaviour of novice and experienced entrepreneurs in relation to innovative business activities. Specifically, blanket assumptions on the role of confidence may be misplaced as its impact changes with experience to alter how entrepreneurs make sense of their environment

Mine or mother’s? Exploring the self-ownership effect across cultures

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Unusual power dependence of two-tone intermodulation in high-T-c superconducting microwave resonators

Willemsen BA, Kihlstrom KE, Dahm T. Unusual power dependence of two-tone intermodulation in high-T-c superconducting microwave resonators. Applied Physics Letters. 1999;74(5):753-755.We study the power dependence of two-tone intermodulation arising in high-T-c superconducting microwave resonators as a function of each tone separately. In the regime where the intermodulation power varies as the square of the input power for equally strong tones, we observe unexpected behavior of the power dependence on the individual tones. We show that this behavior can be understood in terms of a nonlinear inductance which varies linearly with the magnitude of the input current. These findings provide a consistent phenomenological picture of the unusual power dependence and should place constraints on a microscopic description of nonlinear behavior in high-T-c films where the intermodulation products vary like the square of the input power. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S0003-6951(99)02205-6]

Microwave loss and intermodulation in Tl(2)Ba(2)CaCu(2)O(y) thin films

Willemsen BA, Kihlstrom KE, Dahm T, et al. Microwave loss and intermodulation in Tl(2)Ba(2)CaCu(2)O(y) thin films. Physical Review B. 1998;58(10):6650-6654.A superconducting microstrip hairpin resonator is used as a tool to study the linear and nonlinear microwave response of TBCCO thin films. We extract the surface resistance R(S)(T), penetration depth lambda(T), and intermodulation critical current J(IMD)(T) for such a resonator at 4.2 GHz. The surface impedance results compare well with cavity perturbation measurements on portions of the same wafer. J(IMD)(T) is compared against theoretical models for the intrinsic nonlinear response of s- and d-wave superconductors. We demonstrate that the de critical current J(c) and J(IMD) are distinct material parameters, describing different physical regimes