Gutierrez and the Reasons Why We Become Entrepreneurs
In September 2017, Cédric Gutierrez has joined Bocconi University's Department of Management and Technology as an Assistant Professor. "When I came to visit", he says, "I appreciated the level of collegiality of the faculty. They made me feel very welcome". Gutierrez is interested in the behavioral aspects of decision making in strategy and entrepreneurship. "I examine how cognitive biases and behavioral mechanisms, such as ambiguity aversion or the perception of time influence entrepreneurs' and managers' willingness to take risk".
Gutierrez did not envision a career in academia until the late 2000s. After a MSc in Electrical Engineering in Lyon, he worked in software development and later in marketing for a number of years. "I wanted to put in practice the things that I had learned both in engineering and management, but at a certain moment became attracted by teaching and research. I had organized training sessions in companies where I worked and I really liked conveying ideas and transmitting knowledge". He thus applied for a PhD in Strategy and Management at HEC Paris. "Finally, I had the freedom to investigate phenomena I was interested in, which I had missed while working in the industry".
His research interests lie at the intersection of behavioral decision making, entrepreneurship, and strategy. "I did not start the PhD with this in mind, but I gradually became more and more interested in understanding the behavioral foundations of strategy". He began asking himself why many people choose to become entrepreneurs knowing that they take the risk of making less money than their employed peers. "There is a debate about it. I think there are still understudied behavioral mechanisms that can explain this phenomenon, so I started investigating the role of overconfidence and time preferences on the decision to start a new venture".
Gutierrez is trying to understand whether temporal preferences can impact the decision to become an entrepreneur. "We tend to think that entrepreneurs are risk-seekers. But we know little about how entrepreneurs value their future time. Different people have different perceptions of their future. Can these differences push you to become an entrepreneur?". Gutierrez is also interested in linking organizational design choices to behavioral mechanisms and cognitive biases to understand how they lead to unexpected outcomes. He is currently working on a project on the impact of losing leadership on risk-taking.
In his spare time he loves skating and playing guitar and loop pedal. He uses both of them to realize acoustic covers of his favorite songs.