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Updated on: 03 Oct 2019, 01:14
Originally posted by Skywalker18 on 13 Jun 2018, 19:44.
Last edited by Sajjad1994 on 03 Oct 2019, 01:14, edited 1 time in total.
Last edited by Sajjad1994 on 03 Oct 2019, 01:14, edited 1 time in total.
Updated - Complete topic (776).
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Question 1
A
Be sure to select an answer first to save it in the Error Log before revealing the correct answer (OA)!
Difficulty:
35%
(medium)
Question Stats:
61% (03:03) correct
39%
(03:01) wrong
based on 559
sessions
History
Date
Time
Result
Not Attempted Yet
Question 2
B
Be sure to select an answer first to save it in the Error Log before revealing the correct answer (OA)!
Difficulty:
75%
(hard)
Question Stats:
39% (01:24) correct 61%
(01:13) wrong
based on 566
sessions
History
Date
Time
Result
Not Attempted Yet
Question 3
A
Be sure to select an answer first to save it in the Error Log before revealing the correct answer (OA)!
Difficulty:
55%
(hard)
Question Stats:
52% (01:02) correct 48%
(01:08) wrong
based on 542
sessions
History
Date
Time
Result
Not Attempted Yet
Proverbial wisdom states that “birds of a feather flock together.” Studies have shown that people of similar geographical and educational backgrounds and functional experience are extremely likely to found companies together. Not considering spousal teams in the dataset, it has been found that a founding team is five times more likely to be all-male or all-female team. Also, it is more likely to find founding teams that are remarkably homogeneous with regard to skills and functional backgrounds.
Homogeneity has important benefits. For the founder struggling to meet the challenges of a growing startup, selecting cofounders from among the people with whom he or she probably has important things in common is often the quickest and easiest solution. Not only does it generally take less time to find such people, but it also generally takes less time to develop effective working relationships with such similar people. When founders share a background, they share a common language that facilitates communication, ensuring that the team begins the work relationship with a mutual understanding and hence can skip over part of the learning curve that would absorb the energies of people with very different backgrounds. Increasing homogeneity may, therefore, be a particularly alluring- and, in some ways, a particularly sensible - approach for novice founders heading into unfamiliar territory. Certainly, studies have found that the greater the heterogeneity among executive team members, the greater the risk of interpersonal conflict and the lower the group-level integration. Even though it is very appealing to opt for the “comfortable” and “easy” decision to found with similar cofounders, by doing so founders may be causing long-term problems. Teams with a wide range of pertinent functional skills may be able to build more valuable and enduring startups. Conversely, homogenous teams tend to have overlapping human capital, making it more likely that the team will have redundant strengths and be missing critical skills.
Homogeneity has important benefits. For the founder struggling to meet the challenges of a growing startup, selecting cofounders from among the people with whom he or she probably has important things in common is often the quickest and easiest solution. Not only does it generally take less time to find such people, but it also generally takes less time to develop effective working relationships with such similar people. When founders share a background, they share a common language that facilitates communication, ensuring that the team begins the work relationship with a mutual understanding and hence can skip over part of the learning curve that would absorb the energies of people with very different backgrounds. Increasing homogeneity may, therefore, be a particularly alluring- and, in some ways, a particularly sensible - approach for novice founders heading into unfamiliar territory. Certainly, studies have found that the greater the heterogeneity among executive team members, the greater the risk of interpersonal conflict and the lower the group-level integration. Even though it is very appealing to opt for the “comfortable” and “easy” decision to found with similar cofounders, by doing so founders may be causing long-term problems. Teams with a wide range of pertinent functional skills may be able to build more valuable and enduring startups. Conversely, homogenous teams tend to have overlapping human capital, making it more likely that the team will have redundant strengths and be missing critical skills.
1. From the passage, which of the following cannot be inferred as a benefit of homogeneous teams?
A. Finding a suitable PR and advertising person to add skills that the founders lack.
B. Using Six Sigma tools that the founders are familiar with to exchange information.
C. Evolving from concept to product quickly due to flawless execution.
D. Quickly dividing a complex task into subtasks and assigning them to different teams for execution.
E. Reduce interpersonal conflict while making key decisions.
2. Which of the following can be inferred about start-ups that comprise of homogeneous teams?
A. They may take longer than average to make decisions in areas that the founding members are not familiar about.
B. When they comprise of members who are remarkably homogeneous with regard to skills and functional backgrounds, they may not be able to build more valuable ventures.
C. They usually do not head into unfamiliar territory.
D. They are at a far greater risk of interpersonal conflict than an average startup is.
E. They may have redundant strengths that go underutilized.
3. The author’s main purpose of writing the passage is to:
A. evaluate the benefits and downsides of startups with a particular buildup of founding teams.
B. disprove an accepted notion regarding the success of startups comprising of homogeneous teams.
C. describe a thesis by presenting its upsides and downsides.
D. list the scenarios under which a particular buildup of founding teams may be successful.
E. submit contrasting benefits of various team structures in achieving a particular task
14 Jun 2018, 01:08
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Question 1
The answer is A
We'll go for the
Alternative
approach - since we are asked which cannot be the case, we'll just go over the answers and check which is wrong:A. Finding a suitable PR and advertising person to add skills that the founders lack. But this is an advantage of heterogeneity - with homogeneity ether would be no such PR person! definitely wrong
B. Using Six Sigma tools that the founders are familiar with to exchange information. good communication is indeed described as an advantage
C. Evolving from concept to product quickly due to flawless execution. speed is indeed described as an advantage
D. Quickly dividing a complex task into subtasks and assigning them to different teams for execution. yes - homogenous teams are described as efficient
E. Reduce interpersonal conflict while making key decisions.this is explicitly stated
General Discussion
14 Jun 2018, 01:14
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Question 2
The answer is B.
We'll use the
Logical
approach, since we are asked to infer.The passage lists many advantages of homogenous teams, yet in the end it describes some disadvantages. By telling us that heterogenous teams may build "more valuable" startups, we can directly infer that homogenous teams may build less valuable ones - answer (B).
If we're still not sure, we can eliminate the other answers:
A. They may take longer than average to make decisions in areas that the founding members are not familiar about. the exact opposite is stated
C. They usually do not head into unfamiliar territory. the opposite is stated: " Increasing homogeneity may, therefore, be a particularly alluring- and, in some ways, a particularly sensible - approach for novice founders heading into unfamiliar territory"
D. They are at a far greater risk of interpersonal conflict than an average startup is. the opposite is stated: they are at a lesser risk
E. They may have redundant strengths that go underutilized. they do have redundant strengths - but why would these be underutilized? we'd except the opposite - they would mainly use these strengths
