## Tailoring Pitch Styles to Idea Novelty Enhances Reception and Investment## Tailoring Pitch Styles to Idea Novelty Enhances Reception and Investment Original and Progressive Ideas: When presenting groundbreaking ideas that challenge the status quo, it’s crucial to adopt a concrete “how” approach. This means emphasizing practical details, such as the product’s functionality, technical advancements, and user experience. This helps offset the confusion often associated with novel concepts and demonstrates the idea’s viability and feasibility. Incremental and Familiar Ideas: For ideas that represent more gradual advancements, an abstract “why” approach is more effective. This involves outlining the overarching vision or purpose of the idea and tying it to existing knowledge and expectations. By emphasizing the “why,” the pitch connects the idea to a familiar context, making it more accessible and relatable to the audience. Study Findings: A study by academics at Bayes Business School and other institutions involved online survey experiments with business students evaluating pitch decks. The results showed that: * For radically innovative ideas, a concrete “how” pitch led to higher positive reception and investment willingness. * For incrementally innovative ideas, an abstract “why” pitch resulted in better reception and investment support. Implications for Entrepreneurs: The study advises entrepreneurs to tailor their pitch styles to the novelty of their ideas to maximize their appeal and attract investment. By adopting a concrete “how” approach for groundbreaking ideas and an abstract “why” approach for incremental innovations, entrepreneurs can effectively communicate the value and practicality of their concepts. Future Research: The study’s findings suggest further research opportunities, such as investigating the effectiveness of different pitch styles in different contexts (e.g., industry, audience characteristics) and examining how pitch style interacts with other factors (e.g., speaker credibility, audience motivation).
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A study of the styles of presenting ideas to audiences found that pitches promoting radical ideas are better received when presented in concrete and explanatory “how” terms. Progressive ideas, on the other hand, do better with an abstract “why” pitch.
Previous research has shown that professional audiences, such as investors, prefer concrete pitches with ‘how’ style explanations, while lay audiences, such as students and crowdfunders, respond better to ‘why’ style pitches for abstract ideas.
Professor Simone Ferriani, Professor of Entrepreneurship at Bayes Business School (formerly Cass), City, University of London, said: “We wanted to identify the best way for entrepreneurs to pitch their ideas to gain the attention and investment of the public. Could the way they pitched be affecting their success? What if they had great ideas but pitched them in the wrong way? We wanted to investigate which pitch styles work best with different types of ideas.”
To test this, academics conducted two experiments using an online survey of business students evaluating pitch decks, to see when new ideas were more likely to be positively received. The study used entrepreneurial pitches and varied the originality of the ideas and the style of abstract “why” the idea works versus concrete “how” the idea works. They looked at how these factors affected the reception of the idea and their willingness to support it.
The results indicate that the pitch strategy should match the novelty of the idea to make it more attractive and attract investment. The article, “Radically concrete or incrementally abstract? The contingent role of abstract and concrete framing in pitching novel ideas,” is published in Innovation: Organization & Management.
Professor Ferriani added: “Imagine a tech startup introducing a groundbreaking new virtual reality (VR) gaming platform that revolutionises the gaming experience. Our findings suggest that in their pitch to potential users, they should emphasise concrete usability details such as its advanced feedback technology, immersive 360-degree visuals and seamless integration with existing gaming consoles.
“When ideas have the potential to disrupt the status quo, this explanatory approach is key to offsetting the confusion that new ideas can cause. Conversely, when ideas are less of a leap and more of a step forward, as with incremental innovations, abstract language that outlines the ‘why’ can be more effective.”
Denise Falchetti, assistant professor of management at the George Washington University School of Business (GWSB), adds: “This strategy plays on the audience’s existing knowledge and expectations, tying the new idea to familiar concepts and emphasizing its place within a broader vision or goal.”
Gino Cattani, professor of management and organizations at New York University Stern School, concluded: “The research advises a tailored approach: for breakthrough innovations, describe the practical aspects; for incremental improvements, focus on the overarching vision. As the language of entrepreneurship continues to evolve, this study provides a compass for navigating the intricate dance of persuasion and influence, and offers a linguistic toolkit for turning novel concepts into embraced innovations.”
More information:
Denise Falchetti et al, Radically Concrete or Incrementally Abstract? The Contingent Role of Abstract and Concrete Framing in Pitching New Ideas, Innovation (2024). DOI: 10.1080/14479338.2024.2363254
Offered by City University London
Quote: Research shows entrepreneurs should tweak their pitches based on how innovative their idea is (2024, July 10) Retrieved July 10, 2024 from https://phys.org/news/2024-07-entrepreneurs-tweak-pitches-based-idea.html
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