What is the most significant thing that differentiates entrepreneurs from others? Somehow, in the face of overwhelming odds that they will fail, they still manage to push forward. Rejection, almost inevitable, doesn’t deter them. The rest of us kill inventive ideas before we even test them because we fear rejection. This NPR story explores a new form of therapy where rejection is turned into a game: how many times can you get rejected in a day? Could desensitizing people to failure create more entrepreneurs? This also has important implications for academics who typically face many rejections from journals for each manuscript that gets accepted. Without “rejection therapy,” they may avoid sending papers to journals because they are concerned that the work will be rejected. Like would be entrepreneurs, they kill ideas before they have had a chance to test the waters.

Contributed by Don Hatfield