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SPEAKERS
Jeff York, Ben Warnick, Alex Kier, Brad Werner

Jeff York  00:14
Welcome to creative distillation where we distill entrepreneurship research into actionable insights. I'm your host, Jeff York, research director at the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the elite school of business University of Colorado Boulder. I'm here as always with my co host. I'm Brad Warner.

Brad Werner  00:32
I'm Faculty Director at the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship. And you know, Jeff, I think before we jumped in and talk about our show today, we should actually say a couple words about the Deming center. Deming center is really a hub of entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado. We help a lot of people, both students, but community as well, the outreach that we do, award winning institution, by the way, but it's a real privilege to work there with you and our friend and executive director, Eric Mueller. We do great work. And I'm very, very proud of it. And I know you are as well,

Jeff York  01:02
of course, yeah. And previous creative distillation podcast guest Eric Mueller. That's right. That's really the most important thing you need to know about Mueller. He was once on the podcast. So I think he's pretty, he's pretty much changed his title to that, like creative distillation guest, you know,

Brad Werner  01:17
he has street cred. Now.

Jeff York  01:19
He does. He's legit, for sure. Now, these podcasts. And what's really cool is like, during the pandemic, the lead school has completed a construction project that builds a literal bridge between the Department of engineering or I should say this the School of Engineering at CU Boulder and my office and Brad's office and the Deming center and all sorts other stuff is going to be on a bridge between engineering and business, which I think is awesome, and really exciting. And we're seeing all sorts of synergies come from that I know you work with a lot of engineering students as I do, Brad. And it's it's really exciting when you put business students together with people who actually know how to build something. And people that can build things together, people that know how to sell it and build a business around it. That's a that's the magic sauce, I think for entrepreneurship.

Brad Werner  02:06
Yep. And I have to tell you, I am so optimistic about the future of the United States, our country, the world's, all the problems that we're facing with the students that are running through the center. And running through leads, I think is just really incredible. I mean, they share this common strand of DNA, that they want to make a change. And I think that they're going to be equipped to do that.

Jeff York  02:26
I agree. So nice to have some optimism coming out of the the darkness is been the past year or so. Although, you know, it's been productive and Brad and I actually got together in person for I think the second time during the pandemic, got to get outside and do some hiking around and shoot guns, which involves our hobby and got to see his dog do some retrieving, which was just fantastic, wonderful dog. Really, really well trained and like my dog. My dog is trained to lay in front of the fire and warm his belly. That's his main thing. Brad's dog is trained to actually find birds and retrieve them. He did a really nice job. Very impressive.

Brad Werner  03:06
Yeah, watching the dog actually is the coolest part for me about going bird hunting. But also I have to tell you, so my dog is eight years old. He is trained to hunt. But he's also an awesome family dog. But the next day, Jeff, he couldn't walk. He was toast and I do. I got yelled at by my wife. That I was not was not being a good steward to my dog. But you were out there. There was no way to stop him.

Jeff York  03:29
He wouldn't stop he just stood there barked as to why he would move again. Like you asked his get going. Come on Lazy Sunday. So Jeff, you have two guests here. I see. We do have two guests. Who are these guys. We have two gentlemen with us today, Ben warneke. And Alex gear, both of which are part of the Department of Management Information Systems and entrepreneurship at the Kherson College of Business, which is at Washington State University Vancouver. Welcome, gentlemen. Thanks. Glad to be here. Thanks, Jeff. And Brad, glad to be here. We're thrilled to have you guys here today. So, you know, we were thinking about like, we're gonna have these guys on Well, we'll talk about their paper in a little bit. We've got a paper that's in press at the Journal of business mentoring and and what I do when we're setting up the podcast is I basically have two criteria for guests. First of all, I know them and think they'll just be interesting and I don't really care what they talk about. And I've known Alex for a while I don't really have been and I just met but first time meeting, right first time meeting virtually Well, we'll meet in person someday, I'm sure we'll, we're gonna read trip out to Vancouver. Actually, we're gonna do a whole distillation tour and just go visit everybody we've ever had on the podcast and like a, an RV with our dogs. I think that'd be quite.

Brad Werner  04:43
I'd love to do it. I think we would have such a great time Joey gonna have to get clearance. Actually, we need to expand our budget. Joel's comments. Oh,

Jeff York  04:51
yeah, yeah, no, that's right. We, of course will bring Joel in and we'll just have the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship. Well, I'm sure fund that. So all you folks out there well. Feel thumbs and impact investors and people looking to really support a worthy cause. Donate to us so that we can go road trip across the country and meet everyone that's around the broadcast during the pandemic, there's surely nothing better you can put your money towards.

Brad Werner  05:13
I actually think that that's true.

Jeff York  05:16
I don't think that's true at all.

Brad Werner  05:17
We're sitting entrepreneurship all over the world. Jeff.

Jeff York  05:20
Well, thanks for joining us today, guys. So but what I Another thing I do is I go look at the the journals, the academic journals, you know, those ones that you know, you only have to pay $4,000 to get access to Brad, you know, a bargain at any price. And, and I go look at those, and I find interesting papers. And that's where I came across this paper. So

Brad Werner  05:41
we have a little clip of me stop you for a second before you introduce the paper. I'm not going through the academics. Does anybody read this? Like, oh, so tell me someone reading it. Other than

Jeff York  05:56
I'm gonna let Alex and Ben talk to you about this, because

Brad Werner  05:58
I know Alex, and I want to really know or get to understand your audience as we get into this. But let's talk booze first.

Jeff York  06:04
Okay, yeah, first of all, so obviously, these guys are up in Vancouver. And we were looking around for Northwestern beers. And what we aside was to what we just said, You guys just said any Northwestern beer. Right? That was what you said.

Alex Kier  06:19
Yeah, we just wanted to make sure that you can get something that you can get your hands on in Boulder. So I said whatever you can find in the Pacific Northwest works for us.

Jeff York  06:26
So I could have gone to Brad's favorite liquor store Hazel's which is this massive Walmart of like high end beverages. And it is insane. I don't even know how many Northwest's beers I could have looked at there. But I instead went to my local favorite North boulder liquor, which is a tiny hole in the wall liquor store, but you know, I like them a lot. I haven't been going there during COVID because it's so small, but then they've done an excellent job actually managing that. So if you're looking for a a small local liquor store that has done a wonderful job managing COVID and there's really friendly that on over North boulder liquor on Broadway good place.

Brad Werner  07:04
And, by the way, Jeff, I love Hazel's but North boulder liquor is also my go to liquor store. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, it's old school. I love the old coolers in the back. Great and very knowledgeable folks, you know, going to Hazel's is like going to Walmart's with booze, which is sometimes great. And you can get anything there. But I think that supporting North Boulder. I love the folks there and I love their Bourbons.

Jeff York  07:27
Yeah, they got killer selection of stuff there and, and so I went there and I just started looking for Northwestern beers and found one that I've never had and this is what rough beast. I just like saying that what rough beast from brick side burning. And I did I was doing some research last night to tell him browse running a d&d game and I thought, well, I should try what rough beast because the can has like a giant tentacle with a person fishing off it. And the phrase what rough beast actually comes from a William Butler Yeats poem, the second coming, which is alluding to the book of Revelation. And apparently, this is interesting. The rough beast is a reference to the Antichrist. So you guys adequately scared to try this beer? Now?

Brad Werner  08:17
You want to think about when you're having a beer,

Jeff York  08:19
Alex and Ben, did you know that about this beer? I did not notice so so we'll get to taste a little bit of the Antichrist today. Oh my god. Well, if we ever run if people did not subscribe to our podcast, we're doing pretty well. We've talked about Honey.

Brad Werner  08:37
Yeah, I'm gonna call my dad. Light a candle for us.

Jeff York  08:40
We can get this balanced up with a quick phone call. Okay, that's good. Okay, so what rough beast if you guys had this beer before, though, either of you? I have not.

Ben Warnick  08:49
Oh, first time walked up to the brewery yesterday to grab it though. So. Okay. Looks like a pretty great place. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, it was maybe 10 minute walk less when you guys come visit?

Jeff York  09:00
Oh, yeah. All right. So what rough beast breakside Brewery. It says hazy Indian Pale Ale, which is actually a New England style origin. Basically, what they started doing is Hetty topper from Alchemist probably the for typical hazy IPA. This is style. Anybody that drinks a lot of beer. It's taken the craft brewing market by storm. And a lot of people think that the haze comes from yeast, like, like a heavy vise in like German wheat beer, but in fact, the haze comes from the hops and the massive additions of hops that go into these beers. Hey, first impressions of the beer gentlemen.

Alex Kier  09:44
I like it so it's got a nice golden flavor. It's got some good balance and good kinda fruitiness not overpowering. I'm not actually a big IPA drinker but this is pretty good.

Jeff York  09:57
I get it's got really orangey hue to it. Compared to a lot of IPAs, less straw colored more orange, big hops like grapefruit. Oh, no, these are obviously Northwestern hops. Definitely hazy can't even see. The light test can't see anything through it. Pretty nice. What do you think, Brad?

Brad Werner  10:21
Well, I came prepared with my bourbon because I'm not a beer drinker either. But I did open this up. I actually think this is one of the better beers that we've had on the podcast for my palate was really good.

Jeff York  10:30
That is high praise.

Brad Werner  10:32
That's a big deal, right? I mean, I would actually have one of these. That is a big deal. Yeah. Oh, glad to not disappoint. Yeah. How does this rate in the beer universe to you, Jeff?

Jeff York  10:42
I don't know, man. I'm like, I like that sour beer we had last time better.

Brad Werner  10:48
Oh, oh, that stuff was terrible. So you guys are following a week of last for last podcast, we had the hazy beer or now excuse me, the sour beers. And then the time before that we had a person on the podcast that like mixing 18 year old McCallum with coffee. So thank God, we are back on track with something good. I mean, this is this has been tough,

11:12
I believe a sequence of podcasts a little screwed up there. But those are both true statements about some guests. There's actually a doctoral student that Drake Drake McCallum and coffee bread, like coming out of his ears. It

Brad Werner  11:24
was great. Oh, no. By the way, he's not with the university anymore.

Jeff York  11:28
Yes, he is. He's a very good young scholar.

Brad Werner  11:31
I've seasoned yet. It's easier, but we need to review his application.

Jeff York  11:36
Alright, so I really like this actually. What do you think, Ben?

Ben Warnick  11:39
I like it so so I'm not a huge beer drinker. I feel like moving to the Portland area that's going to hopefully change pretty quickly. I think I'll get pulled to being a craft brewery aficionado in no time. I'm not there yet. But uh, so from kind of a lay perspective, some fruity notes in here a little little tropical, which I appreciate.

Brad Werner  12:00
Yeah. So bad. What is your normal drink of choice? Are you just not a drinker? Or is it just something else? Stay bourbon.

Ben Warnick  12:07
Usually not bourbon. Yeah, so like Jin's kind of my go to. Oh, Oh, nice. I have a valid answer. You have to have good gin though.

Brad Werner  12:20
What's nice beer. We should talk about this beer though. I want to hear what a good gin is first, and then I'm going to go back to the beer.

12:25
Okay, I've

Ben Warnick  12:26
been trying so Beefeaters, is that a good one? Yeah. So there are different all kinds of different kinds. So so one that I've been trying lately is the aviation Jen, which is local to Portland, that is good. So it's, it's, it's less Juniper forward. So some of the gins are just hitching the face with that, almost like you're drinking grass. But the there's been kind of this new wave of American gins that are a little more balanced. If that Juniper forward taste isn't quite your thing. It has have a nice mix of spices to balance it out.

Brad Werner  12:58
Oh, that sounds great. Are you making martinis? Are you making gin and tonics or just straight gin?

Ben Warnick  13:03
Mostly gin and tonics is my go to but it's good, straight to awesome on the rocks.

Jeff York  13:09
I like a gin and tonic in the summer, for sure. Yep. And there's a whole big craft gin movement thing I do is weird was in the UK. A guy obviously it was at least a year ago. But there's a huge craft gin movement, the UK right now, like, really big deal. And the big thing is you go and this is like the hip thing. Probably. I don't know what's happening. Nothing's happening. More tip is to hang out in your house and drink whatever you got and listen to our podcast. Especially in the UK. They're like locked down again, but um, but the big thing was you go get these goblets like these big goblets with tons of ice, and then they would mix it with gin and whatever. It's kind of fancy gin and tonic type thing. And there's all these fruity things and they were awesomely refreshing. Very, very good. But that was the hip thing. I was there. Like, I know, it was the people that looked it. were drinking those to me. So that probably was hip like five years ago. This beer is really good. super big grapefruit pineapple. Big thing with these hazy IPAs is just the overload fruit. Here's what I don't like about hazy IPAs. And this beer is typical in this regard. Take a big everybody take a big day. Wait for it. Does anybody else feel like a burning sensation in the back of their throat and a little bit down their throat like just a little bit, astringency almost like acidic. I know I'm like psychologically influencing you to feel that now. Here's the thing. There's so much so much hops in these things, that they have this almost unpleasant, almost like indigestion after effect for me. But then again, I'm very weak as Brad will vouch for. And so that's probably why but I just find them like, and I love hops, but it's just it's the it's the bittering hops I'm not crazy about there's almost too much like how Put in the kettle at bittering for me like a lot of people obviously people love hazy IPAs are the most tip. Well, there I go again, not yet trendy, kind of beer. I have a personal afficionado and I'll get some of this first to try next time bread. I like milkshake IPA.

Brad Werner  15:16
There's such a thing. Oh, yeah.

Jeff York  15:17
milkshake. IPAs are usually heavily dry hopped IPAs that have lactose and fruit added to them in huge amounts. So my current favorite ama tried to get that baronne here for noses is called the velvet series of one called strawberry velvet to strawberry milkshake IV. I like that because it's basically it's an hazy IPA, that the lactose kind of cancels out that acidic feeling gives it like a creamier, more like a milk stout kind of mouthfeel. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about breakside what rough beast? I just, this is good. What a cool kids. Yeah, this is good. I mean, is there really any bad beers made in the northwest? I mean, like,

Alex Kier  16:00
Yeah, I don't know. No, I'm glad I bought more than one.

Ben Warnick  16:04
I don't, I don't know. Between Colorado and Portland. I think all the bad beers probably get weeded out pretty quickly. don't last very long.

Jeff York  16:14
You would think so? There's a few bad breweries around here that I'm not going to name because that would be really rude. But they stick around like loyal following. At some point. There's got to be a shakeout in this industry. I don't know when it's gonna happen if COVID don't do it. I don't know what does because like people can make bad beers and stay in business and in craft brewing. I don't know how, but they do. What is that? How does that happen? What is Bell?

Brad Werner  16:40
how did how do they stay in business? Right? There's tremendous competition this industry

Jeff York  16:44
because people don't care. Oh, God. There's competition. But it's also people just don't care. They like the idea of craft beer. They don't really care about the beer. Oh, gotcha.

Brad Werner  16:53
I gotcha.

Jeff York  16:54
That's my hypothesis.

Brad Werner  16:55
Should I? Have you ever had heard of three floyds brewing. So in Chicago, it was readily available. Three floyds has, I think a beer called Gumball dribble. And that is really up. That's one of the ones I really like, but I like this one jet pot as much as as that one as well. So write your secret hophead Oh, come on. My great grandfather came from Germany started a huge brewery until prohibition. So my family I come from a family of brewers, my son's a brewer. Just because I like bourbon. I love the art of beer. Just I'm really, really picky because I to me, bourbon is better. And I have a couple Bourbons that I really like. So but yeah, there's some great beers. Unless you, you know,

Jeff York  17:37
get offered a sour beer. In which case, you

Brad Werner  17:39
know, then I told my son about it. He loves it. I mean, that's like the holy grail to him for beer. And for me, it's like it's disgusting.

Jeff York  17:46
Love it. Well, okay. Any further sorts of thoughts about breaks out? What do you think Alex? You're a Northwestern beer aficionado? Where does this rank for you?

Alex Kier  17:54
Yeah, I would put it right up there as one of the better ones I've had. I think it's, it's hard in Portland. There's just as we're talking about, there's just so many different breweries that you could literally go years trying to try all the different breweries in Portland and you can't try them all. But but this one I do, like, I bought more than one can that I did. Because this may become part of my repertoire. This is certainly pretty good. Go. That's awesome.

Jeff York  18:19
Yeah, I previewed it last night with my d&d group and the couple of people that play Dungeons and Dragons with and shockingly, people that play Dungeons dragons also tend to be a little nerdy. No way. Yeah, no, I know. It's a surprise it is. And two of them are really big beer nerds, like brew all their own beer and then only drink things like this one guy's really into Swedish yeast strains. And I brought this anyway. And so I brought this beer up, and they're like, Oh, yeah, breakside bah, bah, bah, bah, dah, dah, dah, dah. So apparently, this is like a well known thing amongst people. They're nerdy about beer than, than I am. Alright, so I guess we should talk about paper. That's ostensibly why I was excited about this. So I gave Brad a choice. I said bread. I don't really have a guest lined up this week. Our guests we were going to have had to reschedule. And I was like, I found two really interesting papers. Would you rather talk about one? How entrepreneurship can help alleviate global inequality and economic development and save the world or to the effects of cannabis use on entrepreneurs ideation. And Brad blade you pick?

Brad Werner  19:30
Let's go cannabis.

Jeff York  19:31
Yeah, of course. So I mean, there's really no choice to be had. I love love this paper. I was looking through papers and just trying to find some interesting ones. And I'll tell you what, man, he may laugh and make fun of the fact that do people ever read this thing? I think if people scan Journal of business venturing papers in press, I think more people would read entrepreneurship papers because there's just a plethora of interesting work coming out their journal business venturing their head editors Jeff Megan He's an amazing scholar, and a University of Colorado, as well as who has been involved with the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship over the years, just gonna try to steal him away from Indiana like by talking about his relationship Colorado. In fact, as a professor at Indiana University, as we've talked about a lot, those folks who really do a lot of great things there. Anyway, he runs a tight ship and only publishes really quality work. But more importantly, from the perspective, this podcast publishes work that's interesting. Like it's not dotting the i's and crossing the T. It's pushing the boundaries. And I think this paper by Ben and Alex and their coffers, now if I mispronounce Emily's last name, please tell Emily Emma France, right. Yeah, I think she would just Erica France. Yeah. All right. I mean, you know, being from Mississippi, I'd say La France. But I'll say less sophisticated sound somewhat educated, sophisticated, sophisticated drinking beer here on a Friday afternoon. The Brad's talking about hunting dogs and

Brad Werner  21:03
dog can hunt.

Jeff York  21:05
They're both at the Department of Psychology at Washington State University as well. And this paper I just I saw the title. I was like, wow, this is cool. It's called head in the clouds. cannabis users creativity and new venture ideation depends on their entrepreneurial passion and experience. Alright, so we always read the title first.

Brad Werner  21:24
First of all, even before I read the frickin thing, and how does this happen? Are you guys like sitting in your backyard with a fire going a couple beers passing a joint around saying, You know what? We got to come up with an idea. Oh,

21:35
here we go. I

Brad Werner  21:36
mean, I mean, I've had many businesses pitch to me, that have been developed over beer and hang about by a fire. How does this even happen? You know,

Ben Warnick  21:45
so Alex does creativity work. So Alex is published on imagine nativeness and how entrepreneurs being imaginative how that's really important and coming up with ideas that break new ground and create value for the world. So I was kind of the boundary spanner in this. So knowing Alex and then also Washington State, I made friends with a couple researchers. So Carrie Cutler, exclusively researches cannabis, really, as her primary research area. And that's an area that's been she's a psychologist, so yeah, so I, you know, through mutual friends, I got acquainted with her and I got thinking, hey, there's some intersection here, people talk about cannabis and creativity. There hasn't been that much research on it. Carrie and Emily had been starting to look into it. So Emily was a grad student at the time a PhD student who has since graduated. And so I kind of, you know, we all came together and we started talking, we hashed it out. And this is truly an interdisciplinary kind of thing that I think if we hadn't had the entrepreneurship view, or the cannabis view, we wouldn't have the paper that we do.

Brad Werner  22:55
Interesting.

Jeff York  22:56
That's super cool. I think there's so much opportunity for entrepreneurship scholars, and there is a lot of cross disciplinary work. But sometimes we go insular or not be collaborating with people there in psychology, or sociology, or economics or even other disciplines like organizational behavior, or operations. I think that's, that's awesome. Yeah, it's,

Brad Werner  23:16
it's really, and I totally think, first of all, entrepreneurship is cross discipline, right? It doesn't reside in the business school. It's just where offices happen to be. So I love the mixture of this. We repeat the Title One more time, and then I'll give you my feedback on that. I actually can't remember the title. It's only like, 30 seconds ago, but I still can't remember.

Jeff York  23:35
You got to stop vaping during the podcast, Brad, I mean, it's always like, Yeah,

Brad Werner  23:38
well, you know what my doctor says what I have to do, so I just do it.

Jeff York  23:42
Oh, yeah. You got to do what you got to do. I mean, you got a prescription is chronic pain, folks. He really does see chronic pain. Head in the clouds. Or I should say, head in the clouds. cannabis users creativity in new venture ideation depends on their entrepreneurial passion and experience.

Brad Werner  24:00
I like it. Actually. I do what you like it? Well, if you throw weed in the title on good, holy crap.

Jeff York  24:08
Wow, guys, you don't mean I mean, I'm sure you're, I'm sure you are serial listeners of every episode of the podcast like all of our listeners here on Creative distillation, where we distill entrepreneurial research into actionable insights on behalf of the Dimmick Center for Entrepreneurship. But yeah, I got that in bread. That was slick one.

Brad Werner  24:29
Yeah. If they disagree with me, how can they get ahold of me?

Jeff York  24:32
Anyone that was to write hate mail to brand? You know, join me. Thanks to Brad's efforts, we now have our own email address. This is a big progress for us here at the little startup that is creative distillation, it's a C as in creative D as in distillation. c d podcast@colorado.edu. Reach out to this. Make sure you address your comments to Brad and if they're particularly scathing about any of his lack of insight or educational astuteness I think that would be most welcome. And also feel free to pitch him any venture you would like to get his advice on, he'd be more than happy to advise you and help you line up investment. Right bread. For sure. You know, he's not very busy.

Brad Werner  25:14
So you know what sent send me anything he wants to any any suggestions about the podcast? Anything you'd like me to plug or talk about?

Jeff York  25:20
Yeah, seriously? Great. Yeah, CD podcast, not CD podcast, like it's a CD podcast. Although, I mean, this week, we could you know, we're talking about getting Okay, I'll stop. Anyhow. So anyway, guys, I was just gonna say like, seriously, though, I do like, and I know we're talking about the title of your paper will get into the paper. Trust me, that's been a recurring theme on this podcast that Brad, here's the first part of you know, everything before the colon. And the academic paper title is like, Oh, that sounds sort of interesting. And then we read him everything after the colon. He's like, Oh, my God, what the hell is wrong with up? How did you come up with that?

Brad Werner  25:54
Oh, you know, there's weed involved that some of those times.

Jeff York  25:57
But what I like about your title is it actually says what the paper shows. That's amazing. That's a really, I, my hat's off to you. Because I don't think I've ever written a title to a paper that actually stated what you found. I've done some simpler ones that managed to get the colon out of I was proud of that. But Nice job. They're very nice. So we've heard a little bit about how the paper came about, like, what do you guys do? Like, what's what's you? So you got this idea? You're like, hey, we've got this psychologist thing and cannabis use. And then we were interested in creativity and entrepreneurship. Clearly, there's some overlap here. How did the paper came about from there?

Ben Warnick  26:32
So we started, you know, bouncing around ideas on how to really explore the intersection of these areas. So I guess I, what I didn't add is, and what we didn't initially intend to focus as much on as we did was entrepreneurial. Passion is my area. So we kind of were seeing the intersection of passion, cannabis and entrepreneurial creativity. And so what what we thought is, hey, let's do an experiment, you know, do an ideation task. So there are some Unfortunately, some federal restrictions make it really tough to get people high and do experiments that way. But things are changing. They're, it's getting a bit easier. But what we did is we found chronic cannabis users, and people who have hardly if ever used cannabis at all. And we presented them with the technology, we said, here's a description of virtual reality, just to make sure they're all up to speed on what that is. And we said, okay, three minutes, come up with as many ideas as you can based on virtual reality. And so they did that after three minutes. They chose what they thought their best idea was. And we went and and a few of the authors, we went and evaluated their ideas based on how original they were, and how feasible they were. So to get a sense of differences between people who are cannabis users and people who are not

Jeff York  27:57
super cool. How did you identify people? Like, did you just put out like a advertisement for research participants at your school? or How did you identify p Bre?

Brad Werner  28:05
We'd here?

Jeff York  28:06
Yes. I said, free weed dude. And then like the people that came in, they were like, Alright, we're gonna test you. And then they had another sign that said, No weed. And then the people. Yes, I know, I would do it.

Alex Kier  28:19
If it was only that easy. So we did the experiment online. Okay, we use a third party sampling service to help us identify entrepreneurs. They helped that to make sure they were entrepreneurs, they answered a bunch of questions to make sure they were entrepreneurs. And then they did the experiment.

Jeff York  28:38
So everybody in the study, regardless if they were cannabis user or not, was an entrepreneur. Correct? Very cool. Okay. So we got these people, we're doing this thing, and they're answering these questions. I mean, honestly, it's kind of a cool, I mean, it's sort of what we do in entrepreneurship classes to a certain extent, like on the first cut, I mean, I know that you guys want to teach me I'm always like, hey, let's generate a bunch of ideas. And then I'm trying to have the class like, assess, you know, is this feasible? And we don't really focus much on the originality. I'm curious, how did you think about originality, though? That's an interesting kind of construct there.

Alex Kier  29:12
Yeah, I can, I can pick that one. So we base a lot of our work in the creativity literature, which creativity is defined as an idea that's novel and useful, kind of the two important elements. And so when we have them generate ideas, we wanted to tease apart to see okay, are there differences with people that generate novel ideas versus versus useful? And then we got to Well, okay, how do you how do you actually measure novel and useful and so we used existing scales of originality and feasibility feels a little bit more, more relevant to the entrepreneurship space, you know, can this idea it really be done? Does it have any potential, you know, market potential, and so that's why we we looked at both because we're kind of leaning on the creativity literature that says, Well, these two you have to have both to have a creative idea,

Jeff York  30:00
right? It can't just be original, it also has to be of use to somebody applicable.

Ben Warnick  30:06
Yeah. Or the other way around to I mean, a feasible idea that isn't original isn't going to do much good in the world, you know, you might as well just set up another, you know, they're

Brad Werner  30:17
gonna jump in here. Because there are ideas that other people are doing, the people can do TEDx better, right? So you got to be really careful about that. And certainly in stage about saying, you know, what someone else is doing that, for instance, Ilan Musk, when he got high, 12 years ago said, you know, let's put batteries in cars. Okay, really good idea isn't feasible? Maybe not. And maybe it wasn't feasible at the time with timing is in technology, and all these other things have to align. Right. So how do you actually judge feasibility, kind of the way that you just explained it? But

Ben Warnick  30:47
in terms of feasibility, we looked at like, could this be implemented? Have you thought through and really elaborated on the idea? Can Have you thought through how you would do this? Or could you do this, and we saw, like, clear differences and a lot of these different ideas. And some people, you know, they've got these crazy ideas, but they haven't, haven't thought through the pragmatic elements of it, of how they would do it, or if it matters to the world, or if they were to push forward, what the details are. And then other people did a lot better in thinking through, like, what this work, and and and how they would actually push forward with it.

Jeff York  31:27
So you're not so much making the call on this is just like, Ben and Alex and Emily, and Kerry's judgment of if this is feasible or not, you're doing an assessment of do these people have any path to actually executing this, which I think is a reasonable assessment, we do that what I mean, when you listen to someone's pitch, I mean, I may not know anything about bio engineering, but I can listen to a pitch and tell if these people actually have some path to doing their idea or not. Is that accurate?

Alex Kier  32:00
Yeah. And remember, I mean, this is so our paper it was it was an ideation exercise. So these are really rough, initial ideas, right. And so part of that feasibility, first start Exactly. And so part of that feasibility measurement is, as they have they at least given some thought to, well, what's the next step going forward? How would you apply this idea? And in what market? And what would be your next step? So So yes, but remember, though, all these ideas because they're so rough in the beginning, right? We're not talking about did they have execution plans? It's just have they actually given some thought on how you put this together? Right, right. Did

Jeff York  32:35
they think it through? Well, that's interesting. So like, I mean, I know what the findings are, except read the paper. And again,

Brad Werner  32:42
I'm actually I'm on the edge of my seat. No, you

Jeff York  32:44
don't know. You don't know. So So don't tell Brad. Like this. Just keep him hanging. You'll never know, Brad. Just have, you'll have to go pay. Wait, wait, wait, you have to pay to access the last paper or

Brad Werner  32:56
49 bucks. What the

Jeff York  32:59
whole thing. Brad was trying to go look at Greg Fisher's paper on Journal of Management Studies. And it's like, yeah, you can look at the paper. It's 49 bucks, we actually need to do a whole thing. Actually, we should do it with Macmillan, about the the journals. I think he would, we'll do an episode that's not for today. So anyway, yeah. So guys, tell tell us about what you found. This is fascinating. So you, so you went out, you said, Okay, we're gonna take these people, we're gonna say, chronic Canvas user, not chronic cannabis user. And then we're gonna ask them to come up with a bunch of ideas all on the same ideas that we're gonna give him the same prompts. And then we're gonna say, okay, we want to identify which of these ideas is more original? Or, which is more feet? I get that right. So far, so good. Cool. Okay, good. So far, so good. I'm passing. I gotta drink some more. What rough beast?

Brad Werner  33:45
We have one question about your survey sample. What was the age range of these folks?

Ben Warnick  33:51
So 18 to 87, we had a cue even on the high end, we made sure that those on the really high age range weren't skewing the results. So there were three that were kind of on the more elderly age range. Yeah. Average was about 42. Wow. Okay, actually, I'm

Brad Werner  34:11
surprised there. Were What do you think of their brand? Like, what's that? I mean, I was thinking of, you know, a bunch of college kids 18 to 25, maybe 27. But that's certainly not. So. So this is great. And I actually think that that's helpful for our audience to understand. This is a major age range. I mean, this is the spectrum of young folks all the way to senior seniors. So pretty cool. That's my sample.

Alex Kier  34:38
Well, as a as a teaser, Brad, experience came out as a really important variable in our story. So as Ben goes over the results, you'll see we're kind of experienced entrepreneurial experience comes in. Okay,

Jeff York  34:50
that makes sense. So what did you guys find? Tell us about so

Ben Warnick  34:53
as you might expect, I don't know. So well. Maybe I'll ask Greg. What do you think cannabis users Non users originality feasibility, what would you expect? If I can put you on the spot? My expectation is,

Brad Werner  35:08
I bet Oh, Neil, it he's pretty my expectation. Well, yeah, this is a tougher one, because you're asking, in a sense that someone under the influence be a great idea here. Right. Is that the bottom line here?

Jeff York  35:20
Well, someone that's a chronic user of Pacific cannabis. I mean, I think we, I think it's safe to say someone who's a chronic user of methamphetamine is not going to be necessarily a great ideator.

Brad Werner  35:31
Well, I'm still here. Right. I still have my teeth, though. So let me before I guess, let me get this straight. We're talking about serial entrepreneurs here. Correct.

Ben Warnick  35:42
All of them had founded a venture at least once? Correct. Okay.

Brad Werner  35:48
I actually think that the results are going to be pretty positive towards the, in a sense, expanding the horizons of someone's mind. Let me just put it that way.

Jeff York  35:56
So there'll be more originally,

Brad Werner  35:58
yes.

Jeff York  35:59
But what about feasible?

Brad Werner  36:00
feasibility? If they have experienced starting businesses? I think that actually could be okay, too. I'm going with the weed users. And I, Ron, well, I

Jeff York  36:09
mean, we're older. So I mean, what do you expect, and

Brad Werner  36:11
by the way, I'm not a chronic weed user at all. So this is this is not like my wheelhouse got

Jeff York  36:16
chronic, no daily, just evenings.

Brad Werner  36:19
So this is not my wheelhouse, but I'm just I'm gonna say I want to go out on a limb and say, I think the people that are regular weed users that have already started, businesses, actually may be successful moving forward.

Ben Warnick  36:29
So you're not too far off base. So starting with kind of the main difference between people who regularly use cannabis and not and so I just want to make sure to clarify. So these people weren't necessarily high at the time we did account for whether they were results held whether they were or weren't. Oh, so there's a lot of research kind of showing that the effects of cannabis, especially in terms of, you know, being able to connect disparate concepts, reduced inhibitions and increased impulsivity, this can last for up to a month. Wow, really. So our sample of cannabis users, so they all use at least twice in the past month, most of them much more than that. So in the high teens, so I think it was almost 20 times in the past month, on average, and our cannabis user samples, so the nine users, most of them had never used cannabis at all, only 3% had used it more than once, and none more than five times in their whole life. So well beyond that month range. So the users, the people who regularly use cannabis, more original ideas, but their ideas weren't as feasible. But as the title states, so this really depended on passion, and experience. So if you think about these differences of being more original, but less feasible, these get switched on, for people who are really passionate about coming up with new ideas. So if you're an idea person, and you're a canvas user, you're going to have these effects compared to nonusers, more original ideas, but, but they're going to be less feasible. But this kind of switches off, for better or worse, the more experience people have, so they get closer to being similar to the non users. So both in terms of getting the benefits from being really original, that starts to go down, the more ventures you found it. So this thinking outside the box, in some ways, experience takes away from that and pushes you a little more to feasibility.

Brad Werner  38:40
I love it, I'm actually thinking about it. I'm just taking cannabis off the table here for a second, I'm just thinking about ideas to come out of undergrads versus grad students. And this is just a total I have no, no survey behind this. But just in my observations, I've noticed that the undergrads are much more creative, and much more willing to take a risk of trying something that hasn't been tried. And the more the MBA folks and the graduate students are more constrained in their approach.

Alex Kier  39:12
Yeah, and Brad, the other research would, would certainly support that as well. So I mean, that the undergrads they don't know what they don't know. Right. And so as you as you gain more experience, and there's there's lots of research that shows that actually start to narrow your your thinking you start to kind of try to operate with only within the same industry because that's that's what you know, and, you know, unfortunately, they they a lot of research has found this curvilinear effect where experience is good up to a point and then eventually, you skip so narrow minded that you're not open to new ideas. I think it's because a lot of experienced entrepreneurs, they subconsciously edit their ideas, right? So they know, oh, this isn't gonna work and they won't even put that idea on paper because they immediately know that's probably not something that's going to work for XYZ. And so we never even See those ideas, you know, get to paper. And so I think that's probably why we found this

Brad Werner  40:05
really interesting. By the way, anytime you agree with me, Alex, you're invited back anytime

Jeff York  40:11
we pass the Brad test more than one. Except for the gin instead bourbon.

Brad Werner  40:16
Yeah, Jen's a little. I'm waiting for the weather to get nicer.

Jeff York  40:20
But you got there by telling us interesting types of things about Jen. So that's good. That's good. So let me ask you this guys. Like we always tried to hear on grid distillation try to, you know, get down to like something useful for entrepreneurs. You know, you got cannabis being legalized across the country, virtually, I'm sure there'll be federal legalization before too long. During the Biden administration, I'm sure that'll happen. If nothing else, just economic reasons helping us recover at the pandemic, in my humble opinion. But so if I'm a more experienced entrepreneur, and I'm saying like, guy, you know, I just feel like I'm kind of rut I just sold my last venture, I don't have a really creative idea. I'm kind of just thinking on how to do another thing that was like what I did before, is taking up like cannabis use a way to maybe break out of that rut, or am I stretching too far from what you found?

Ben Warnick  41:10
I don't think you're stretching too far at all, like Alex was mentioning, sometimes being too experienced, really narrows your thinking of what will work. But when we're thinking about coming up with new venture ideas, and brainstorming, so there are really two stages, you've got this brainstorming stage where you shouldn't have that filter, where you should be thinking big, right before you get to the evaluation and execution stages. So you don't want to prematurely evaluate your ideas. And cannabis, our results seem to suggest that it can help people broaden their thinking, be a little more original than they would otherwise, especially if you're passionate about coming up with those ideas. So if you're motivated to do that, you care about it. cannabis is something that can really unlock and get you out of that rut a little bit. And the plus side of this is our results suggest as well, coupled with cannabis research is that you could take up cannabis. And then if you don't want to be someone who uses cannabis over and over and over again, research shows that, you know, you return back to kind of baseline after about a month. So this could be something you use when you need that creative jolt. And then when you need the more feasibility, which which cannabis doesn't seem to be as good for just lay off the pot for a while and get to business.

Jeff York  42:39
There you go.

Brad Werner  42:40
So you're finding is if you're a young entrepreneur, go out get high and work through this. Is that your Thomas?

42:46
Hmm. I don't know if I would go quite that far. I knew I thought I was just your new bread.

Alex Kier  42:53
Yeah, I mean, I think you know, for us, this paper is about certainly opening up that question. cannabis is a taboo subject in certainly in in kind of very conservative, you know, management journals and things. And so this paper was about, like you hear stories all the time about, you know, these entrepreneur founders that have used cannabis and you know, what it does for their creativity? And so we said, well, let's, you know, let's actually study it in a rigorous way and see if there's actually any effect. So I don't think our

Jeff York  43:24
must smoke a joint on Joe Rogan. Everybody going nuts. Right? Yeah, exactly. I don't know if I would.

Brad Werner  43:31
What's the difference, though, Alex, between somebody going out and smoking weed, kind of just to relax and maybe relax their brain to think bigger and having a couple beers and doing the same thing?

Alex Kier  43:42
I think that's fair. I mean, there is probably and maybe Ben, you can talk some about the science, there is some science that connects using cannabis with kind of opening up those creative pathways that is a little bit different than than alcohol,

Jeff York  43:55
different receptors in the brain, is it not? I mean, first of all, you know, alcohol is a depressant. And I'm no expert on this. I'm just talking off the cuff here. But, but like, I mean, I think it lowers inhibitions and actually kicked her out paper for years called the tavern effect, where we're going to talk about the foment of creativity based on the density of microbreweries. still gonna write that paper someday the American Brewers Association loves this paper, obviously. But if you think about it, like alcohol, lowers inhibition, but doesn't necessarily increase creativity. And at some point, there's a tipping point with alcohol too, that we often reach on this podcast, where we've had too much and we stopped making any sense at all. That's not true. But But you know, I mean, it there's a tipping point, and that's actually great. In this podcast, we have a beer a drink, it lowers inhibitions. We have a more frank discussion. Yes. If we were to instead and maybe we should try this, we thought about trying this, like go pick up some kind of like high THC beverage and consume it. I don't know, Brad, I think we would kind of freak out and not make a whole lot of sense.

Brad Werner  45:00
I think we just need to figure it out. I think we need to experiment, right? We're entrepreneurs, we just go and let's get some

Jeff York  45:05
different chemical reaction in the room. I mean, there are serious differences other than Lord ambition. I think that's similar. Everything else is different. And I think probably I'm sure you guys know more about this than I from your from your research. But that's my understanding anyway.

Ben Warnick  45:19
Right. So there has been some research on alcohol and creativity. Cannabis and alcohol both share these disinhibited qualities, but cannabis, it activates on these cannabinoid receptors in the brain, which is effectively kind of like, it turns the off, switch on getting your creative thoughts to fire. So all these ideas and connecting seemingly unrelated ideas, that's where cannabis has effects that I don't think we would expect from alcohol and

Jeff York  45:48
even with other psychedelics. So I mean, there's all this stuff about, I mean, of course, micro dosing and Silicon Valley's the big hip thing. And we've had a big legalization of psilocybin mushrooms here in Denver. And there's all sorts of good evidence emerging, those are very effective treatments, or at least I know about work on MDMA, and mushrooms as treatments for depression, setting you're opening up receptors and making connections that you don't normally make. Whereas with alcohol, you're just lowering your inhibitions. It's not really opening anything up. It's just sort of, it's kind of like the beer test bread, right? Like you're getting ready to invest with some people or go into business with them. You really kind of miss a big thing in Japan, right? You won't go out and get drunk with them. Lie, you want to see what they turn into, you have to ask them, because it lowers inhibitions. So far, it's right, that people's kind of true character, it's emerged. But I think this is fascinating work, guys, I think it's really cool that you're pushing the boundaries. And I think the idea of we, you know, we're always trying to, you know, create legislation say what's actionable here? I think the message, I'm taking this, I'm gonna paraphrase you guys tell me if I'm getting it wrong here. Look, cannabis can be a useful tool for opening up creativity, there's a lot of different ways to consume it, you don't have to smoke anything anymore. You don't have to bear the stigma of going out and finding a dealer or anything like that, you can take a very small dosage you can work with whomever you're working with. Try it if you're trying to open up creativity. However, it is not particularly helpful for trying to figure out how to actually execute on it and get it done. I know I have many of my friends who are beyond chronic cannabis users from high school, and oh, my god, they're not they're not getting a new Alaska. That's about it. As far as that's got traction, a lot of them are very entrepreneurial. But they do stay in that rut. They don't change a lot after a certain period.

Brad Werner  47:43
I have a question for the team here. So my question is what question that's opened up? And where does your research go from here? request? Right. So now that you have this understanding? What what is really interesting about this, that maybe in the future, we'll be able to help entrepreneurs on the ground?

Alex Kier  47:58
I see. Our work is Yes, certainly leading to a number of future directions that I think we're just kind of scratching the surface, I think, Well, you know, are there other other types of creativity, boosting type exercises that maybe if we combine with with cannabis, and we'll see, we'll see a bigger effect? You know, we looked at entrepreneur experience just on the number of ventures, but we don't know, well, does the type of experience matter whether or not you're a serial entrepreneur? Whether you have, you know, depth of experience or breadth of experience? How do those things relate to coming out with new business ideas? And then of course, you know, we didn't look at acute effects of cannabis intoxication. That's not easy to do from a, you know, a public institution. cannabis is still technically an illegal drug in the United States, even though it's legal in certain states. There's not many universities that will fund and support getting a bunch of people intoxicated with cannabis. But there is some studies that are starting to go in that direction to be really interesting to see. Okay, let's look at you know, some acute effects and see what happens. So I think there's a lot of different areas, ways to go with this research. I think we kind of see this as kind of the first initial step two, at least, get people thinking about it, make it a little bit less taboo, and allow people to actually talk about it like we're doing today.

Jeff York  49:20
Right? That's great, guys. Congratulations on the paper. I think it's, it's really interesting. And if you want to check it out, again, you can go look at its inpress you can't get the full paper behind the firewall, but we'll post it somewhere so people can get access to it. Head in the clouds, cannabis users creativity and new venture ideation depends on their entrepreneurial passionate experience. We've had the the lead authors with us today Benjamin warneke. And Alex Kerr also co authored with Emily le France and Carrie Cutler. Both these gentlemen are at the Carson College of Business at Washington State University Vancouver. But thank you so much, guys. I congratulations sincerely On the paper, I think it's going to be super influential. I love how you're bringing in all the stuff on creativity and passion into it. So it's not just like, I've seen a lot of like, Hey, we looked at we'd like, you guys are like taking real theoretical strands from entrepreneurship and blending them in. And that's why I really admire when people are actually building on entrepreneurship theories and are working to get creative directions. That's great. Really cool. This is good. Thanks, Jeff. This was thanks. Fine. Thanks. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Well, you got to come back for the one where we try the high potency THC gummies instead of sampling. We did do CBD on one podcast. We did see you guys sound like a total Boomer. We did some CBD bro. It was we had a guy doing you were in that cool club. We did the CBD chocolates and the distillery that was a famous one. We had a guest Yeah, it

Brad Werner  50:50
was great. Oh, yeah.

Jeff York  50:51
Our guest was just like, what is this? You're doing? Well, it's a podcast. It's cool. But yeah, we would love to visit with you guys. And thanks for much for being here. So that's it for this episode of crave distillation. Once again, my name is Jeff York. I'm the research director at the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship with Leeds School of Business University of Colorado Boulder, joined by my co host, Brad Werner, teaching director at the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship. If you want to reach us, please reach out to us CD C as in creative D as in distillation. podcast@colorado.edu, that CD podcast at colorado. edu. If you enjoyed what you heard today and want to hear more, we'll go back we've actually got a sort of a back catalogue of great scholars talking about really interesting research and right and I tried to figure out what what is actionable from that and how do we get to an actionable insight and I think we're about 99.9% successful in that so far. So we will continue on our journey together. And if you liked it, hit the subscribe button. Hey, why not? If you have any feedback, send us an email or reach out to us. We're easy to find. We're both University of Colorado Boulder. And we'll see you next time on Creative distillation. Cheers. Cheers.