Proverbial Wisdom States that “Birds of a Feather Flock Together.”

Reading Passage Question

Question: Proverbial wisdom states that “birds of a feather flock together.” Studies have shown that people of similar geographical and educational backgrounds and functional experience are extremely likely to found companies together. Not considering spousal teams in the dataset, it has been found that a founding team is five times more likely to be all-male or all-female team. Also, it is more likely to find founding teams that are remarkably homogeneous with regard to skills and functional backgrounds.

Homogeneity has important benefits. For the founder struggling to meet the challenges of a growing startup, selecting cofounders from among the people with whom he or she probably has important things in common is often the quickest and easiest solution. Not only does it generally take less time to find such people, but it also generally takes less time to develop effective working relationships with such similar people. When founders share a background, they share a common language that facilitates communication, ensuring that the team begins the work relationship with a mutual understanding and hence can skip over part of the learning curve that would absorb the energies of people with very different backgrounds. Increasing homogeneity may, therefore, be a particularly alluring- and, in some ways, a particularly sensible - approach for novice founders heading into unfamiliar territory. Certainly, studies have found that the greater the heterogeneity among executive team members, the greater the risk of interpersonal conflict and the lower the group-level integration. Even though it is very appealing to opt for the “comfortable” and “easy” decision to found with similar cofounders, by doing so founders may be causing long-term problems. Teams with a wide range of pertinent functional skills may be able to build more valuable and enduring startups. Conversely, homogenous teams tend to have overlapping human capital, making it more likely that the team will have redundant strengths and be missing critical skills.

“Proverbial wisdom states that “birds of a feather flock together.”” - is a GMAT reading comprehension passage with answers. Candidates need a strong knowledge of English GMAT reading comprehension.

This GMAT Reading Comprehension consists of 3 comprehension questions. The GMAT Reading Comprehension questions are designed for the purpose of testing candidates’ abilities in understanding, analyzing, and applying information or concepts. Candidates can actively prepare with the help of GMAT Reading Comprehension Practice Questions.

Solution and Explanation

Question 1
From the passage, which of the following cannot be inferred as a benefit of homogeneous teams?

1. Finding a suitable PR and advertising person to add skills that the founders lack.
2. Using Six Sigma tools that the founders are familiar with to exchange information.
3. Evolving from concept to product quickly due to flawless execution.
4. Quickly dividing a complex task into subtasks and assigning them to different teams for execution.
5. Reduce interpersonal conflict while making key decisions.

Question 2 
Which of the following can be inferred about start-ups that comprise of homogeneous teams?

1. They may take longer than average to make decisions in areas that the founding members are not familiar about.
2. When they comprise of members who are remarkably homogeneous with regard to skills and functional backgrounds, they may not be able to build more valuable ventures.
3. They usually do not head into unfamiliar territory.
4. They are at a far greater risk of interpersonal conflict than an average startup is.
5. They may have redundant strengths that go underutilized.

Question 3
The author’s main purpose of writing the passage is to:

1. evaluate the benefits and downsides of startups with a particular buildup of founding teams.
2. disprove an accepted notion regarding the success of startups comprising of homogeneous teams.
3. describe a thesis by presenting its upsides and downsides.
4. list the scenarios under which a particular buildup of founding teams may be successful.
5. submit contrasting benefits of various team structures in achieving a particular task

Suggested GMAT Reading Comprehension Questions

• More Selective than Most Chemical Pesticides in that they Ordinarily Destroy only Unwanted Species
• Citing the Fact that the Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita was Higher in 1997
• Historians have Identified Two Dominant Currents in the Russian Women's Movement of the Late Tsarist Period.
• Some Historians Contend that Conditions in the United States During the Second World War
• Comparable Worth, as a Standard Applied to Eliminate Inequities in Pay
• The United States Government has a Long-Standing Policy of Using Federal Funds to Keep Small Business Viable.
• A Recent Study has Provided Clues to Predator-Prey Dynamics in the Late Pleistocene Era.
• Most Farmers Attempting to Control Slugs and Snails Turn to Baited Slug Poison, or Molluscicide.
• In a New Book About the Antiparty Feeling of the Early Political Leaders of the United States
• Colonial Historian David Allen's Intensive Study of Five Communities in Seventeenth-Century
• In the 1980's, Astronomer Bohdan Paczynski Proposed a Way of Determining Whether the Enormous Dark Halo Constituting the Outermost Part of the Milky Way Galaxy
• The General Density Dependence Model can be Applied to Explain the Founding of Specialist Firms
• Many People Believe that Wages are Lower in Developing Countries than in Developed Countries
• Even More Than Mountainside Slides of Mud or Snow, Naturally Occurring Forest Fires Promote the Survival of Aspen Trees.
• The Black Death, a Severe Epidemic that Ravaged Fourteenth Century Europe
• The System of Patent-Granting, Which Confers Temporary Monopolies for the Exploitation of New Technologies
• Ethnohistoric Documents from Sixteenth-Century Mexico Suggesting that Weaving and Cooking were the Most Common Productive Activities for Aztec Women
• Solar Ponds are Bodies of Water in Which Circulation is Incomplete and There is a Very High Salt Concentration that Increases with Depth
• Traditional Social Science Models of Class Groups in the United States are Based on Economic Status
• Conventional Wisdom has it that Large Deficits in the United States Budget Cause Interest Rates to Rise.