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If i was you i'll follow the Andrew's approach. He asks basically 2 types of questions: (1) Questions aimed to understand the reasons behind a success and iden

by drtse4 16y ago

If i was you i'll follow the Andrew's approach. He asks basically 2 types of questions: (1) Questions aimed to understand the reasons behind a success and identify a sequence of actions/decisions that, with some variations, could make that success repeatable. Basically: How it started-environment description/key events-turning points/main problems-solutions/what's next. (2) Questions related to the solution of uncommon problems(but that could easily happen to someone else) and uncommon solutions to common problems. The content of the questions varies greatly considering who you are interviewing. Usually i appreciate an interview when it catches the uniqueness of a given entrepreneurial experience, i don't care about stuff that i could read elsewhere with more ease without watching a video.

ohashi 16y ago
Thanks for this. It's a nice breakdown into 2 general ideas that are very fascinating to hear about. I will keep them in my notepad of questions to think about when I am interviewing people :) I definitely agree with on the last bit, I don't like asking the same questions I've seen. I will generally try and see if the person has done some other interviews or talked about stuff on their blog and either ask about that stuff (going further) or avoid it and talk about something else. The biggest problem in my mind (not sure if it is only there or not) is whether everyone has the same background information... just because it's out there, does that mean I should ignore it? Odds are in many cases people never heard of the story of the entrepreneur (unless it's a fairly big name). What do you think?
- drtse4 16y ago
  Generic and well-known info (agreed, can usually be quite common things) can make sense for the sake of completeness of the interview but not for much else. Less known or seemingly trivial background information could instead help to evaluate some of the answers the interviewee give or understand the reasoning behind some of his choices. Just to give you an example, does the fact that the interviewee knew at some point in his life person X or that he previously did Y lead him to do Z? Knowing that X and Y exist could help to find the answer. These kind of questions aim to explain the why and thus interesting only from a biographic point of view, personally i feel the how to be more useful so i'd limit the biographic data to a minimum, explain only what is needed to give context to the interview.

by drtse4 16y ago

ohashi 16y ago

Thanks for this. It's a nice breakdown into 2 general ideas that are very fascinating to hear about. I will keep them in my notepad of questions to think about when I am interviewing people :) I definitely agree with on the last bit, I don't like asking the same questions I've seen. I will generally try and see if the person has done some other interviews or talked about stuff on their blog and either ask about that stuff (going further) or avoid it and talk about something else. The biggest problem in my mind (not sure if it is only there or not) is whether everyone has the same background information... just because it's out there, does that mean I should ignore it? Odds are in many cases people never heard of the story of the entrepreneur (unless it's a fairly big name). What do you think?

drtse4 16y ago
Generic and well-known info (agreed, can usually be quite common things) can make sense for the sake of completeness of the interview but not for much else. Less known or seemingly trivial background information could instead help to evaluate some of the answers the interviewee give or understand the reasoning behind some of his choices. Just to give you an example, does the fact that the interviewee knew at some point in his life person X or that he previously did Y lead him to do Z? Knowing that X and Y exist could help to find the answer. These kind of questions aim to explain the why and thus interesting only from a biographic point of view, personally i feel the how to be more useful so i'd limit the biographic data to a minimum, explain only what is needed to give context to the interview.