Tomlinson, E. C. (2020). Stasis in the shark tank: Persuading an audience of funders to act on behalf of entrepreneurs. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 34(3), 221-249.

Tomlinson, E. C. (2020). Stasis in the shark tank: Persuading an audience of funders to act on behalf of entrepreneurs. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 34(3), 221-249.

In this original research article, Tomlinson uses stasis theory in order to analyze Shark Tank pitches from a funding point of view. 

Doesn't really seem like there's a gap to this. She says this: "Given that many entrepreneurs’ most significant need in the early stages of their business is to persuade potential funders to come onboard, a greater understanding of entrepreneurial rhetoric would be highly valuable."

Ok, nevermind. Found it. "Recently, researchers have also investigated the role of gesturing and figurative lan- guage in obtaining funding (J. S. Clarke et al., 2019). But as J. S. Clarke et al. (2019) indicated, communication is a “joint activity between entre- preneurs and investors” (p. 356), and investors and funders merit closer examination as well. Specifically, the funders act as engaged audience members, and the ways that they engage and disengage during pitches and Q&A remain largely unexamined. To these ends, this study examines the rhetorical role of funders within the pitch setting." Looks like she put the gap in the introduction--pretty early on too. Then, in the literature review, she didn't offer a motivation for the study; she just said why the inquiry would be valuable. That sounds contradictory. In any case, the gap wasn't in the lit review but the intro, which makes sense. The function of the lit review is different. How though?

The important point is that people have studied pitches before, but no one has studied them through stasis or from the investor's point of view before. I don't think anyways...

She selects a hodgepodge of episodes in order to get a sense of how the investors and contestants change over time. I got the sense that it was like Survivor. Because potential applicants watch the show, their strategies adapt to the shark's proclivities over time. In order to study that change then Tomlinson selects episodes from a range of the series as a whole, rather than just studying a particular season or even randomly sampling. In total, she gets 81 pitches from 19 episodes. 

Five rounds of coding. 

• dropouts & offers
• questions asked
• reasons for dropouts according to refined???? stasis categories
• axial coding to further refine
• paths to dropouts????

In the results section, she goes through each of the stasis categories

• being
• quality 
• quantity
• place

She says that the contestants become more savvy over time and that the founders end of having to place a burden on the stasis of fit (which is a subcategory? where did that come from?) because it was a good way to end the conversation. 

Fit is a subcategory of quality. See table II. 

Ok, so fit-related dropouts increase, but all other stasis decrease. Likewise, ventures funded goes up over time. 

Certain sharks tended to dropout at certain points in the stases. 

Tomlinson uses the language of overcoming the stases ("...as contestants’ knowledge of the show increased, they were able to overcome more of the other stases..."), which I think relates to the theoretical framework. Hmmm. Maybe not. 

These citations return in the discussion for the stasis of being

• "Cialdini’s (2009) strategy ofworking toward a common goal to increase likability."
• "a strategy known as increasing presence, or “bringing-before-the-eyes” (Newman, 2002)."
• "Long (1983) explained the psychology of enacting presence:"

Tomlinson gives key takeaways in each of the subsections of the discussion, such as this one: "To successfully navigate the stasis of quality, then, entrepreneurs should evaluate both the quality of the concept they are proposing and the business model within which it will be situated. Providing evidence of the success of similar business models would also be helpful."

Oh, looks like the strategy thing occurs everywhere (cf. Belinsky & Gogan). "The strategies I have delineated for building presence, increasing likability and credibility, and avoiding the appearance of greed might prove particularly useful as students seek support for their ideas."

Interestingly, you are doing audience analysis for your diss. "Instructors can also teach students to segment the audience and develop appeals designed to address the needs, interests, and potential objections of different audience segments. In addition to traditional methods, such as requiring them to build audience profiles and conduct psychographic and demographic research, instructors can discuss the types of questions savvy audiences ask, as demonstrated above by the sharks, and encourage students to role-play Q&A sessions as part of their coursework. Teaching students how to navigate sophisticated persuasive settings, such as the pitch and Q&A genre, will improve the persuasive capability of students as they enter the workplace or start their own businesses."

Importance of fit. "As the entrepreneurs advance through the business-building life cycle, audience analysis will come into play repetitively when they need to seek funding. For instance, entrepreneurs need to know at what stage different investors are willing to consider a venture and the types of businesses these different investors tend to fund."

Oh yea, the job search thing. "Also, many of the persuasive strategies unveiled through this analysis of Shark Tank transfer well into teaching about employment communication across college majors. For example, job seekers attempt to convey the value of what they offer to organizations and to answer potential challengers. When a graduating student lacks relevant job experience and identifies that as a potential stasis point for being hired, the student can be taught strategies for demonstrating fit with the employer in other ways. Overall, the adroit job seeker can be taught to identify the stasis points that could interfere with moving the hiring process forward and how to address those points both within employment documents and in job interviews." Yea, I guess what you could do is have students read stasis theory, perhaps even read this article, and then fill in questions that employers might ask according to the different level--like in table 2. 

True. "Professional communicators and entrepreneurs will benefit from applying some of the principles shown here to preparing for Q&A situations in particular. While stasis has been used as both a generative tool for preparing arguments and an analytic tool for use in situ, its application here to the Q&A segment of pitches is novel."

Another thing to keep in mind here is that these are inventors and not tech companies. Different context. There was even a mom-and-pop pie store. You're not interested in these kinds of pitches. 

https://utexas.box.com/s/thrkmawb5n7tt3tqdrxgbb9logldem0z