Over the course of her twenty-year career, Stanford University psychology professor Carol Dweck discovered that one of our most deep-seated beliefs concerns how we view ability.
Specifically, through her research, Dweck identified two types of mindset that are also key to business innovation:
The fixed mindset.
The growth mindset.
Why are we talking about this?
Because in our experience, we have seen that individuals and organisations that foster and act with a growth mindset consistently generate greater business innovation, both internally and within their marketplace.
Having a growth mindset means understanding that people are not born innovators; innovation is a skill that can be developed and strengthened.
Following this logic, the system creates the conditions for that growth to happen.
Let’s take a closer look at what defines a Growth Mindset in the context of business innovation:
- Those with a growth mindset believe that there are no innate abilities and that deliberate practice is the only way to unlock our true potential.
- A person or system with a “growth mindset” embraces inevitable failures and treats them as allies—using them as a stimulus to redouble their efforts and as a guide to adjust course and test new strategies and paths.
- Those with a growth mindset believe in the “philosophy of hard work” and see success as the natural result of their dedication.
- The goal acts as an incentive, and success is not the final destination, but a springboard to the next step.
These principles create the foundational conditions to nurture and sustain business innovation processes.
It is therefore vital that leadership and management figures in any organisation wishing to drive business innovation, or sustain it over time, embody this mindset themselves and create the environment to encourage it.
Business innovation: the need for a Growth Mindset Leader who:
- Enables experimentation and the freedom to fail: “making mistakes is an integral part of the learning process”
- Shares goals with their team: modern leadership is no longer built on authority and meeting rigid targets. Goals are achieved through team dynamics, adjusting them agilely along the way as new situations emerge
- Encourages team members to:
- conduct an accurate debrief whenever goals are not achieved
- identify how to act more effectively and differently in the future
- reflect on how they overcame past doubts and challenges
- understand how past experiences can be applied to current challenges
- Brings ideas to the surface: creates spaces for active listening to identify their team’s potential, sets and maintains high expectations for each person, helping them develop professionally and fostering the emergence of innovative ideas
- Fosters a culture of constructive discomfort: develops action and growth plans for themselves and the team (new experiences, learning, new projects). Clarifies and shares the challenges the team will face
- Creates reflective spaces where team members can voice their concerns about the challenges they are tackling and freely share their experiences
- Monitors progress to embed a culture of continuous feedback: delivering and monitoring the action plan moves projects forward through an ongoing exchange of feedback
- Shares stories of success and failure, building shared strategies and nurturing a sense of shared accountability and growth
- Celebrates successes to recognise and share the team’s progress
- Leads by example – demonstrating every day that determination, openness to change, and the commitment to collaborate and develop are essential requirements for growth.
