Effectuation – Saras Sarasvathy 008

By Steve Berg

Dr. Saras Sarasvathy teaches MBA and doctoral students at U.VA and also teaches doctoral students in Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa. She is a leading scholar on the cognitive basis for high-performance entrepreneurship. She co-authored the textbook, Effectual Entrepreneurship, which won the Gold Medal at the 2012 Axiom Business Book Awards. She and I discuss a broad range of topics including why entrepreneurs think differently, the differences between effectual logic and causal logic and some of the building blocks of startup success. We talk about how people can become better effectual thinkers and how investors like me can recognize great effectual thinkers. Dr. Sarasvathy brings great energy to the discussion and it was a lot of fun.