Losing your job can be hard. For some, though, it’s the spur they need to start out on their own.

Here’s some interesting research from Harvard Business Review (Eliana Crosina of Babson College and Michael G. Pratt of the Carroll School of Management, Boston College). The researchers find that such job-seekers fall into two categories: Recreators and Repurposers:

Recreators tend to find similar positions, in comparable types of organizations and industries. … Repurposers, by contrast, typically leave organizational careers to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities, in [other] fields.

When people ask me about going independent, I often recommend this book: And What Do You Do? by Bary Hopson and Katie Ledger. Intended as a guide to starting a portfolio career, it’s filled with advice and tools to help understand your own skills and motivations, i.e. the kit-bag that a Repurposer might deploy in a new opportunity.

Interesting research. It’s always useful to see classified and described what you’ve seen in real-life.

You can read the article on HBR.org, here.

Photo by Mantas Hesthaven on Unsplash