Paradigm shift example series#

From my superficial analysis, my lack of business knowledge was the biggest weakness. Again, my failure to succeed was not because I was not trying hard enough I simply lacked the knowledge and skills to make my business a success. I had a good idea, but it was not thought out well. For example, it turned out that my idea was not well developed business-wise. When I began to look back in retrospect, I found some interesting points about my business idea. As a result, I was willing to push my idea even further because I did not believe entrepreneurs should give up.

At this point, I began to question the viability of my idea.ĭespite these setbacks, I rationalized my inability to get investors to believe in me as normal failure that occurs to every entrepreneur. In addition, I did not have the knowledge and skills required to successfully run the business. I did not have clear answers to these questions, and this prompted me ask questions about my paradigm. In addition, the investors would also be interested in profit generation, competition, marketing and distribution of the product. However, whenever I approached them, the investors would ask questions about the management plan and the means to be used to control costs. As a result of these frustrations, I decided to try my luck with angel investors. For example, the business section did not have a clear plan for marketing my product. In addition, the organizations offering the grants did not consider my application because my business plan was too weak and lacked concise information on several accounts. Most of the grants offered were for small businesses already in operation. As a result, I applied for small business grants but no one was willing to risk their money on a start-up. However, although I came up with the idea of starting a media company called EV1, I did not have any capital to actualize the idea.

I choose to pursue my dream of starting a business. After completing high school education, I decided not to join college. As I came to realize, this was my undoing. Paradigms can offer general epistemological viewpoints, like the 'philosophical paradigm initiated by Descartes,' or define a broad sweep of reality, as when 'Paradigms determine large areas of experience at the same time.My initial beliefs, values, attitudes and assumptions informed my decision not to attend college. Masterson quotes Kuhn, who introduces a paradigm as a textbook or classic example that is 'sufficiently unprecedented to attract an enduring group of adherents away from competing modes of scientific activity,' but that is simultaneously 'sufficiently open-ended to leave all sorts of problems for the redefined group of practitioners to resolve.' Writes Kuhn: 'Achievements that share these two characteristics I shall henceforth refer to as 'paradigms.' 'īut in other parts of the text, paradigms cover more ground. (That's right: 21.)įirst, a paradigm could refer to a special kind of achievement. She identified 21 distinct senses in which Kuhn used the term paradigm. In a paper published in 1970, Margaret Masterson presented a careful reading of Kuhn's 1962 book. It turns out this question is hard to answer - not because paradigm has an especially technical or obscure definition, but because it has many. But do they capture what Kuhn actually had in mind in developing an account of scientific change? More than 50 years after Kuhn's famous book, these definitions may seem intuitive rather than technical. : a theory or a group of ideas about how something should be done, made, or thought aboutĪccordingly, a paradigm shift is defined as 'an important change that happens when the usual way of thinking about or doing something is replaced by a new and different way.'.: a model or pattern for something that may be copied.The Merriam-Webster dictionary offers the following: In a column at The Globe and Mail, Robert Fulford describes paradigm as 'a crossover hit: It moved nimbly from science to culture to sports to business.'īut what, exactly, is a paradigm shift? Or, for that matter, a paradigm? Talk of paradigms and paradigm shifts has since become commonplace - not only in science, but also in business, social movements and beyond.

He suggested that scientific revolutions are not a matter of incremental advance they involve 'paradigm shifts.'

Paradigm shift example series#

Inspired, in part, by the theories of psychologist Jean Piaget, who saw children's development as a series of discrete stages marked by periods of transition, Kuhn posited two kinds of scientific change: incremental developments in the course of what he called 'normal science,' and scientific revolutions that punctuate these more stable periods.