Busenitz & Barney 1997 (JBV) — entrepreneurs score significantly higher than corporate managers on overconfidence and representativeness

Claim: Busenitz and Barney (1997) compared entrepreneurs with managers in large organizations on overconfidence and representativeness heuristics. Entrepreneurs scored significantly higher on both. The gap is not just absolute (vs population baseline) but differential (vs the corporate-manager comparison group).

Source: Busenitz, L. W., & Barney, J. B. (1997). "Differences between entrepreneurs and managers in large organizations." Journal of Business Venturing 12(1): 9–30. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0883902696000031

Confidence: Verified.

For Candid: Sales reps coming from corporate-employee backgrounds will systematically underestimate the in-house-alternative comparator the GC entertains, because their reference class for "how confident a normal person is about doing a thing themselves" is calibrated on corporate managers — who are less overconfident than entrepreneurs. The implication: the in-house comparator is even more salient and more decision-shaping than it would be in a corporate B2B context.

Combined with: [[camerer-lovallo-1999-overconfidence-reference-group-neglect]] and [[cooper-woo-dunkelberg-1988-entrepreneur-overconfidence-81pct-33pct]].