David Neeleman is the founder of JetBlue Airways and he became public about his attention deficit disorder back in 2000.

While surfing the internet I came across an extremely interesting blog post on bothsidesofthetable.com that discussed the link between ADD and entrepreneurs. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, ADD stands for attention deficit disorder, and it gives people short attention spans and often results in hyperactivity.

The thing I found most interesting about this particular blog post is how it discusses ADD in a positive light and how ADD actually helps entrepreneurs rather than hinder them. One example the article dives into is the co-founder of JetBlue David Neeleman. As the article stated, Neeleman would “sit at meetings where they were talking about meaningless drivel and he would burst out verbally that they were wasting time or he would throw out big ideas and try to push for change.” Founders and CEOs are seen as the leaders of the company, and as leaders they are expected to make key decisions. These key decisions they make can be extreme enough to do things such as alter their company’s business model completely or enhance their product to the point that they catapult themselves to the top of the market that they are competing in.  Most people would believe that having someone with ADD in this position with this much power would be an utter and complete disaster. However, as the article states: “ADD is a trait found in many successful CEO and entrepreneurs.” At first that fact would seem absurd, as it did to me also, but it actually makes perfect sense. People with ADD seek out novelty, and that is one of the foundations of being an entrepreneur. You must be innovative; you need the quality of being original, which means having a value proposition that no other company can match, and this is exactly what a person with ADD possesses. Thus, making them a perfect candidate to be a CEO of a company and lead their team to the top of their respective industry.

Links:

http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2014/11/02/why-add-might-actually-benefit-startup-entrepreneurs/