A Ferrari engine…with bicycle brakes
Neurodivergence and entrepreneurship
The Story
A few years ago, my son was diagnosed with ADHD. After leaving the clinic, I called an ADHD friend who has three ADHD kids, and I said, “We just got this diagnosis, and I may be calling you for advice soon.” My friend said to me, “My first piece of advice is look in the mirror—he got it from you.” I was flabbergasted, and then he said, “And by the way, it is almost 100% genetic, and your wife clearly doesn’t have it.” So I ran out and bought three or four books about ADHD. It was winter, and I was reading one of the books while sitting on the bleachers in a gym watching my son play indoor soccer, and as I read all about myself, I thought, “This explains everything in my life and career since Mrs. Kirvan’s third-grade class.” I was 57 years old then, and it had never before occurred to me that I might have ADHD, because the diagnosis did not exist when I was a kid—back then, I was just a “problem student.” And yet I had somehow managed to navigate through most of my life with some success. In fact, as I read and talked to other people, it became clear to me that ADHD, and the many behaviors that come with it, have driven the curiosity, creativity, and productivity that have made me who I am today. So I took my son aside and said,
“Don’t feel bad, son. You don’t have a problem, you have an amazing superpower, but you have to learn how to use it and control it, like in “Spiderman,” when Uncle Ben says, ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’”
The Theory
While neurodivergent people—those with ADHD, dyslexia, and autism spectrum disorder—represent 15% to 20% of the population, they account for 18% to 50% of entrepreneurs, and according to one survey, 55% of business owners self-reported as neurodiverse. Popular media highlights famous and successful neurodivergent people like Sir Richard Branson (ADHD and dyslexic) and Elon Musk (autistic), while researchers study why entrepreneurship seems to attract the neurodivergent. One powerful explanation for the connection is the heightened sensation-seeking that is common to neurodivergent people, especially those with ADHD. But neurodivergent people also bring a unique combination of strengths to entrepreneurship, and one study offers these two summary comments:1
“Neurodivergent people frequently demonstrate creativity, divergent thinking, novelty-seeking, problem-solving, and adaptability, which can be assets in the dynamic and fast-changing landscape of entrepreneurship.”
“At the same time, neurodivergent individuals may also demonstrate resilience and adaptability when confronting challenges because they are used to being underdogs and overcoming numerous obstacles throughout their lives.”
ADHD (Bill Gates, John F. Kennedy, and Walt Disney)
About 11% of children in the US have ADHD as compared to 6% of US adults. ADHD is now viewed as a lifelong condition; however, one estimate is that 65% of ADHD children carry it into adulthood. For some older adults—Boomers and Gen Xers—ADHD did not exist as a diagnosis when they were children, and they may have learned to cope without ever knowing they had ADHD. But here is the really big number: An estimated 29% to 35% of entrepreneurs have ADHD.
People with ADHD face challenges related to their hyperactivity, impulsiveness, and the inability to stay focused, which can lead to lower self-efficacy, which in turn can also have negative effects on business survival. ADHD traits in childhood are a predictor of higher rates of entrepreneurship in adulthood, but lower income, as ADHD affects adult life through lower academic achievement, weaker job performance, and greater job instability.
At the same time, people with ADHD benefit from a unique set of strengths, as they have higher energy levels, need less sleep, are highly creative, and are fast idea generators. Some weaknesses even become strengths, for example, when impulsivity translates into decisiveness, which can be an advantage in identifying and exploiting fleeting business opportunities. Perhaps most importantly, people with ADHD “hyperfocus” on things they are interested in, which allows them to bring their passion, persistence, and time commitment to entrepreneurial activities. They are also novelty-seeking and risk-seeking, which are crucial to opportunity recognition, proactiveness, and innovativeness. ADHD people also develop coping skills that build resilience, are achievement-oriented, and perceive themselves as having greater creativity, all of which increases their self-confidence. People with ADHD can increase their chances of career success and life satisfaction through entrepreneurship, which allows them to align their strengths and interests with the flexibility, variation, and autonomy that come with working on their own terms.
“A person with ADHD has the power of a Ferrari engine but with bicycle-strength brakes. It’s the mismatch of engine power to braking capability that causes the problems. Strengthening one’s brakes is the name of the game.”
- Edward M. Hallowell, M.D., author of ADHD 2.0 (and seriously ADHD himself)
Autism (Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Albert Einstein)
The prevalence of autism in 8-year-old children in the US is 3.2% or 1 in 31, with boys three times more likely than girls to be autistic. The incidence of autism has grown 300% in the past several decades, largely due to better diagnostics and increased awareness.
People on the autism spectrum face unique challenges related to social communication and interaction. They have difficulty recognizing and understanding nonverbal signals, and making eye contact and small talk. These challenges make it more difficult both to find traditional jobs and to work in the typical office environment.
On the plus side, there is a strong connection between autism and creativity. Autistic people have excellent problem-solving abilities, are very meticulous, are exceptional at attention to detail, and can stay intensely focused for long periods. They are also superior at pattern recognition and tend to acquire comprehensive, specialized knowledge and expertise in narrow domains that interest them. Together, these strengths make autistic people very good at identifying and solving unique business challenges and creating innovative products and services that serve niche markets. One example is Michael Burry, who earned $100 million for himself and $700 million for his investors when he successfully shorted the housing market in the 2000s. A main character in the book and movie, The Big Short, Burry was a neurologist who left medicine to create his own investment fund, Scion Capital. Rather than a big Wall Street office, Burry ran his company from his home in California—an environment that he controlled. And when he became skeptical of the quality of mortgages, he read and analyzed the fine print in thousands of mortgage-backed security (MBS) prospectuses, determining correctly that many of the subprime borrowers whose mortgages made up MBS were likely to default.
Banker: “These bonds only fail if millions of Americans don’t pay their mortgages. That’s never happened in history. If you’ll excuse me Dr. Burry, it seems like a foolish investment.”
Michael Burry: “Based on the prevailing sentiment of the market, the big banks and popular culture, yes, it’s a foolish investment. But everyone’s wrong.”2
Dyslexia (Charles Schwab, Sir Richard Branson, and Ingvar Kamprad)
People with dyslexia face unique challenges related to reading, spelling, and phonological processing, or “the cognitive ability to perceive, understand, store, and retrieve the sound structure of spoken language.” They struggle with reading long emails and documents, spelling correctly, reading and understanding maps, and generally processing written information and communicating effectively in writing—they read more slowly and must work harder to do it. On the other hand, people with dyslexia are extraordinarily creative, develop excellent comprehension and problem-solving capabilities, and have exceptional spatial reasoning and visual processing skills. They also use strong interpersonal skills to make up for their weaknesses in written communication. Dyslexics can think beyond conventional borders, spot correlations and patterns that others miss, and develop unique concepts and business models. Further, they combine their strong spatial and visual skills to create appealing products that attract customers, with their equally strong oral communication skills to create and successfully pitch their ideas to business partners and investors. The challenges of growing up in and living in a text-based world cause dyslexics to develop extraordinary resilience and adaptability, allowing them to persist despite setbacks and adversity. Dyslexia is prevalent among entrepreneurs who find it easier to forge their own path than to struggle through the traditional work world.
“I would never want to replace my dyslexia. It makes me more intuitive, imaginative, and resourceful.”
- Sir Richard Branson
The Lesson
One day, our son came home from daycare and told us about a classmate who acted differently from the other kids, and my wife said, “Oh, well, that kid must just have a different brain.” And that is how we have always talked about it with our kids. And it turns out that a different brain is not necessarily a liability, as I have learned myself, in the most personal way possible. I have also been a part-time university instructor since 1990, and I have come to realize that there are always different brains in my classroom. Over the years, I’ve had students with ADHD, dyslexia, and autism, as well as aphantasia or “blind mind” (the inability to create and retain images) and dysgraphia, or difficulties with handwriting. Of course, many of these things are also “co-occurring” (like ADHD and dyslexia), so some students may have more than one. I usually don’t advertise this, but I’m a softy when it comes to deadlines, and whatever rules I used to have about late assignments fell away for good during COVID. Now I’ll accept anything in any form up until the last day before grades are due, and, more importantly, I’ll do whatever I can to help a student learn to do something correctly. Why? Well, twenty years ago, I was co-teaching a course, and one day my fellow instructor and I were talking over lunch about teaching tools and methods, when she said,
“If the question is, ‘What is the product of teaching?’ the answer is ‘learning.’”
My job is to help people learn, so these days I try to adapt to the different people and their different brains, find their strengths, and help them all succeed. When I put in a little extra effort, it quickly becomes clear that they are all very smart.
“The concept of neurodiversity presents neurological differences, such as autism, ADHD, and dyslexia, as natural variations of human cognition rather than as deficits.”
- Johan Wiklund, Mi Hoang Tran, and Rasmus Rahn.
Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
- Albert Einstein
Wiklund, Johan, Mi Hoang Tran, and Rasmus Rahn, “Neurodiversity and Entrepreneurship,” a chapter in Neurodiversity and Work, Eric Patton and Alecia M. Santuzzi, eds., Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024. This good and comprehensive treatment of the subject serves as the backbone for this essay, and you can assume that it is the source of all unattributed facts and quotes. I used Google search to find current statistics for the US on the incidence of ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, dyslexia, and neurodivergence generally.
Lewis, Michael, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010.