By: Andi Esposito, Business Editor

October 20, 2006, Telegram & Gazette (Massachusetts)

Hope works against all odds, and people with hope are more likely to be successful in their businesses and personal lives, said author and consultant Andrew J. Razeghi, who spoke yesterday at the New England Business Expo.

A professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and an adviser on growth strategy and innovation, Mr. Razeghi said he decided to write about hope after considering the responses among chief executives and students to ideas and challenges he posed.

"One group gives up, and the other figures it out," he said. "What's the difference between the two? There is no correlation between intelligence and success. It has to do with what they believe."

Hope leads people to act in different ways, to think divergently, to imagine outcomes that odds or convention tell them cannot be, he said.

Why did some World War II fighter pilots in dangerous situations bail out and others stay with the aircraft and manage to land? A study showed those who didn't bail out were able to consider many possible solutions to the same problem, not just one, he said.

"My definition of hope is a willingness to believe in things not yet achieved," said Mr. Razeghi. "Hope is a way to find multiple paths to the future."

Hope not only promotes divergent thinking, it reduces inhibitions that can dissuade us from moving outside of accepted ways of doing things.

Pain and fear can discourage people from risk-taking, he said.

Turning to the audience for illustration, Mr. Razeghi - author of the book, "Hope: How Triumphant Leaders Create the Future" - asked for a volunteer. Bruce R. Mendelsohn of Auburn obliged. Mr. Razeghi gave him $100 in cash, asked him to consider how he would invest the money and sent him back to his seat.

Later, he asked Mr. Mendelsohn to return to the stage.

Mr. Mendelsohn, a job seeker, said he would use the cash to buy flowers for his supportive wife, fill the gas tank and put the rest in the bank.

Mr. Razeghi then took the money away from him, suggesting that the joy of winning isn't as great as the pain of losing, and that losing can weigh on people's minds, deflecting them from possibilities of embracing hope.

Then he returned the money to Mr. Mendelsohn.

Hope isn't a topic discussed in the business world, Mr. Razeghi said.

Yet studies show share prices rise 3.5 percent on average when a corporation's chief executive leaves or is pushed out of office. For the investor, "it's a sign of hope," he said.

Hope is a beacon to light the way in a business community loud with advertising, crowded with products and that is "becoming the same," he said.

But how do people get their arms around hope?

Unlike fear, anger and sadness, which can be read in people's faces, all positive emotions tend to look alike, he said.

Yet hope can be witnessed in other ways: in patients positive about the impact of therapy, who respond better to treatment; in the longer lives of people who are optimists; in higher graduation rates of students with hope; and in the greater success of salespeople with hope, he said.

The message was not lost on Mr. Mendelsohn, who left a job as director of communications for the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, D.C., to move to Auburn and marry the "love of his life," Latin teacher Heather Thompson, in August.

"With the $100 - money is a little tight now - I will buy her flowers, put some in my gas tank and bank the rest," he repeated after the speech.

"I liked his message. It spoke to me because it encourages us to go beyond our limitations. It could not have happened at a better time," said Mr. Mendelsohn. "It encourages me. But the message is more important than the money."