Spartz, J. M., & Weber, R. P. (2015). Writing entrepreneurs: A survey of attitudes, habits, skills, and genres. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 29(4), 428-455.

Spartz, J. M., & Weber, R. P. (2015). Writing entrepreneurs: A survey of attitudes, habits, skills, and genres. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 29(4), 428-455.

 In this original research article, Spartz and Weber design a survey in order to determine what documents and genres entrepreneurs use on the job. 

In order to create this survey, they first did interviews. I don't know how many interviews they did. 

OK. Found it. But apparently, they are going to talk about it more in a forthcoming article. "Ultimately, we were able to inter- view entrepreneurs (N = 8) in a variety of industries: engineering, technology development, software, architecture, green construction sup- plies, bike and ski sales, professional recruitment services, and restaurant management. We asked the participants 11 questions about how they would describe their business; the documents necessary to fund, start, maintain, and grow their businesses; the writing skills they value; the edu- cation or training they received; and the advice they would provide aspir- ing entrepreneurs on the writing and persuasion skills necessary for the various stages of an entrepreneurial venture."

Got confirmation. This article describes the second phase. Not the interview phase. That phase is forthcoming. The survey phase. 

Looks like they made friends with and described their research to entrepreneurs with email lists in the community, notably accelerators. "we developed relationships with SBDCs, business incubators, and entrepreneur groups in southeastern Wisconsin and Hunts- ville, Alabama" What's an SBDC?

They were able to survey 101 entrepreneurs. 

"Our participant sample was quite diverse and fairly representative of the spectrum of entrepreneur types and experiences in our regions. Despite soliciting responses from this diverse population of practicing entrepreneurs, we make no claims that our sample represents either the general populous of entrepreneurs or even all entrepreneurs in our respective regions. As such, because we employed nonprobability convenience sampling methods, we detail data from our participants holistically to offer an illuminating snapshot of the writing needs and habits of a sample of working entrepreneurs. That is, when analyzing our data, we identified no marked or substantial differences between subgroups (regional, business type, size of business, etc.), so we do not distinguish between subgroups when reporting data here4" That's kind of interesting. They certainly got a wide range of entrepreneurs to report, but they don't breakdown the results into genre vis-a-vis specific entrepreneurial population. Probably because they didn't get enough to do that. For example, "Only four of these entrepreneurs’ businesses are publicly traded, two of these generating less and two more than $1 million in annual revenue." So why compare the four with the 71? "The majority of these business owners (n = 71) reported an annual revenue of less than $1 million whereas 30 reported an annual revenue of more than $1 million."

"The survey itself comprised five sections: background information, writing training or education, documents for opening a business, documents for operating a business, and writing traits and habits."

10 survey questions. 

1. What type of writing education or training have 99 you had?
2. What documents/texts did you need BEFORE 95 opening your business?
3. What documents/texts do you use in the 95 operation of your business?
4. How important are well-written documents to 88 the success of your business?
5. How important were the following writing skills 94 in developing your business?
6. How beneficial would improving the following 94 writing skills be for your business?
7. Who does most of the writing in your company? 93 How often do you consider each audience when 94
8. writing?
9. How confident are you in your abilities to write 94 the documents necessary to fund and maintain your business?
10. How confident are you in evaluating your 93 audiences’ reactions to the documents you produce? 

"our twofold intent of 

• alerting the field to the complex needs of writing entrepreneurs and 
• providing professional communication instructors with tools for engaging entrepreneurs. 

Specifically, we report and discuss results in the following three major areas: 

• writing attitudes and habits, 
• writing skills and audience considera- tions, and 
• document genres."

The last three bullets are the results section's themes. 

Section one (writing attitudes and habits) revolves around these two questions:

• How important are welll written documents to the success of your business? (n = 88)
• How confident are you in your abilities to write the documents necessary to fund and maintain your business (n = 94) 

Actually scratch that. There are three different tables/figures in section one. 

• Who does most of the writing in your company? =93)
• How many hours a week do you spend on wriitng (exclusing email) =93)

That was fig 2

In Fig 3, we move into section two (writing skills and audience considera- tions)

• How important were the following writing skills 94 in developing your business? n=94
• How beneficial would improving the following 94 writing skills be for your business? n=94

FIg 4 is also in section two:

A chart of the survey results for the questions concerning audience consideration (n = 94). 

Fif 5 is in section three:

A chart of the participants’ writing-genre use before opening and while operating a business. Note. * indicates sections of the employee-manual genre. 

Oh this is interesting. "While business plans are common projects in entrepreneurship course work, our previous research suggests that other documents and rhetorical situations are underemphasized in entrepreneurship programs (Spartz & Weber, in press). Our data illustrate that while teaching the business plan is obviously important to entrepreneurs—it is a foundational document for venture planning and seeking financial support—a singular focus on this written genre is insufficient for entrepreneurship education; entrepreneurs do more writing and produce more genres than what the existing entrepreneurship research typically suggests. Entrepreneurs may also produce a greater variety of documents than do writers in established organizations (see Couture & Rymer, 1993, for a review of research on the genres that writers typically produce). The sheer number of identified document types at both venture stages indicates that a more robust recognition and under- standing of common entrepreneurial documents could help entrepreneur- ship and writing instructors. With this broadened knowledge, professional communication educators can plan projects that prepare aspiring entrepre- neurs for a wider range of composing and rhetorical tasks." Yea, one of the most interesting things about this article is the wide range of genres that entrepreneurs use both before (question 2) and after (question 3) the business is opened. See appendix. 

"One of the most notable findings of this study is that the purposes of the document types tended to shift after a business opened and was oper- ating. That is, the documents clearly moved from being strategic docu- ments in the before-opening phase to being audience oriented in the operating phase of the business. While the shift in purpose, or genre type, is not especially surprising, it demonstrates that entrepreneurship writing education should consider not just foundational and strategy documents but also operating documents, such as service descriptions, manuals, and proposals. Nascent and practicing entrepreneurs alike might find an instructional focus on operating documents extremely beneficial." So this is similar to what we see in startups with the tech-product-business triad. 

This research project is kind of like ... oh gosh, the woman at Marquette. Nurses. No. EMTs. Liz Angeli. 

Table 2 is interesting. Not fig 2. Table 2. 

I don't get how they whittle down the bigger number into table 2.  "To uncover the specific types of writing that entrepreneurs conduct, we gen- erated lists of document genres that entrepreneurs used both before opening a business (35 genres) and while operating the business (51 genres). The two lists include 19 overlapping genres (for a full list of the identified gen- res and their frequency of use, see the Appendix)." I guess the customer-specific or client-specific part is key. Maybe public-facing is a better term. So they split the documents into public- versus company facing. 

Exactly. "One of the most notable findings of this study is that the purposes of the document types tended to shift after a business opened and was oper- ating. That is, the documents clearly moved from being strategic docu- ments in the before-opening phase to being audience oriented in the operating phase of the business. While the shift in purpose, or genre type, is not especially surprising, it demonstrates that entrepreneurship writing education should consider not just foundational and strategy documents but also operating documents, such as service descriptions, manuals, and proposals. Nascent and practicing entrepreneurs alike might find an instructional focus on operating documents extremely beneficial."

"A final point that is relevant to both professional communication instruc- tors and practitioners is that the participants reported a subset of genres that require more than just linguistic skills. Of the varied genres used by these business owners, several surfaced that we consider to be visually intensive." Yes, I believe this. 

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