At its core, a growth mindset sees opportunities instead of obstacles. Despite scientific evidence to the contrary, many individuals believe their intelligence, talents, and skills do not advance once they reach adulthood.
An eagerness to learn is something every person with a growth mindset possesses. The same can also be said of someone who is at least relatively comfortable with failure. Jack Ma, for example, endured numerous failures before finding success with Alibaba.
A growth mindset is also associated with a consistent ability to adapt to external forces. What’s more, individuals with this mindset are not afraid to learn from mentors or try new things.
At its core, a growth mindset sees opportunities instead of obstacles. It is also a mindset that views failure as a chance to improve and not as a reason to hide from the world.
Despite scientific evidence to the contrary, many individuals believe their intelligence, talents, and skills do not advance once they reach adulthood. This is known as a fixed mindset.
However, psychologists believe that we transition through several stages of development over our lives, with each stage defined by a challenge that must be overcome before reaching the next.
Below we have listed some of the most important examples of how a growth mindset can be embodied in practice.
Be a lifelong learner
An eagerness to learn is something every person with a growth mindset possesses.
Many believe they are incapable of learning something new, with this belief particularly prevalent among older individuals.
Neuroplasticity, or the brain’s ability to change and adapt in response to external stimuli, is one of the critical counterarguments for those who believe their talents and skills do not advance beyond adulthood.
Become more comfortable with failure
Growth and failure go hand in hand. Why? Because to grow, one needs to make mistakes to differentiate between what works and what doesn’t.
Alibaba founder Jack Ma is a classic example of a failure as a driver of success.
He failed his college entrance exams three times and was further rejected by Harvard University ten times.
It also took him about 25 years to get his company.
Those with a growth mindset see failure as a sign that they are taking action toward their goals.
They are resilient individuals who understand that never failing means never trying.
Adaptation
Companies that embody a growth mindset can also adapt to the times. Nike, for example, is not selling the same style of shoe it did when it first started over half a century ago.
Nor is it necessarily using the same materials, processes, or management styles.
Adaption requires consistency, which could also be considered an example of a growth mindset. One company that adapted but lacked consistency was Nokia.
The Finnish multinational’s cell phones were adaptive for a time. Some would even say revolutionary.
But with a stubbornness to then adapt to the emergence of smartphones, the company lacked the consistency to grow.
Draw inspiration from others
Those with a fixed mindset view someone else’s success as a threat.
They compare their talents or abilities to an imagined benchmark, usually someone they believe is superior to them in some shape or form.
Growth mindset, individuals are not intimidated by the success of others and do not let their egos stand in the way of improvement.
The most successful people in any field or industry were once amateurs who likely received coaching or mentorship from a role model.
Trying new things
A growth mindset is associated with experimentation and trying new things.
This can be a difficult growth mindset example to embody since many of us are reluctant to upset the status quo – particularly if we are good at what we do.
Other reasons for not venturing outside our comfort zones are related to some of the topics we’ve already discussed, such as fear of failure or a perceived inability to adapt.
Trying new things is ultimately about attitude.
An employee, for example, can adopt an openness to new experiences when upskilling or moving into an industry they’ve always been passionate about.
They can also accept adaptability (and failure) as integral to growth.
A growth mindset is a model of looking at the world that focuses on the opportunities ahead, believing that you can change yourself for the better to tackle these opportunities. The growth mindset is opposed to the fixed mindset, where people believe people can’t change based on challenges. The fixed mindset person believes in failure as a personal thing. At the same time, a person with a growth mindset believes in failing as part of the process. Thus, a growth mindset starts by separating oneself from failure, understanding that failure does not identify you but is instead part of the growth process.
What's a fixed mindset?
A fixed mindset is a model of the world where a person believes – when failing – that that failure is personal. Meaning the person identifies with the failure rather than understanding that the failure is part of the process. While a fixed mindset can help avoid significant failures, it can also be counterproductive as it hampers the growth process for that person.
Growth vs. fixed mindset
The growth mindset separates the failure from the individual, making it possible to see it as part of the growth process. The fixed mindset makes the person identify with failure, thus substantially slowing down the progress and growth of that person, as failure becomes something to avoid at all costs rather than focusing on experimentation and growth.
A Blockchain Business Model according to the FourWeekMBA framework is made of four main components: Value Model (Core Philosophy, Core Values and Value Propositions for the key stakeholders), Blockchain Model (Protocol Rules, Network Shape and Applications Layer/Ecosystem), Distribution Model (the key channels amplifying the protocol and its communities), and the Economic Model (the dynamics/incentives through which protocol players make money). Those elements coming together can serve as the basis to build and analyze a solid Blockchain Business Model.
In an asymmetric businessmodel, the organization doesn’t monetize the user directly, but it leverages the data users provide coupled with technology, thus have a key customer pay to sustain the core asset. For example, Google makes money by leveraging users’ data, combined with its algorithms sold to advertisers for visibility.
In a business world driven by technology and digitalization, competition is much more fluid, as innovation becomes a bottom-up approach that can come from anywhere. Thus, making it much harder to define the boundaries of existing markets. Therefore, a proper business competition analysis looks at customer, technology, distribution, and financial model overlaps. While at the same time looking at future potential intersections among industries that in the short-term seem unrelated.
Technological modeling is a discipline to provide the basis for companies to sustain innovation, thus developing incremental products. While also looking at breakthrough innovative products that can pave the way for long-term success. In a sort of Barbell Strategy, technological modeling suggests having a two-sided approach, on the one hand, to keep sustaining continuous innovation as a core part of the businessmodel. On the other hand, it places bets on future developments that have the potential to break through and take a leap forward.
A transitional business model is used by companies to enter a market (usually a niche) to gain initial traction and prove the idea is sound. The transitional business model helps the company secure the needed capital while having a reality check. It helps shape the long-term vision and a scalable businessmodel.
The minimum viable audience (MVA) represents the smallest possible audience that can sustain your business as you get it started from a microniche (the smallest subset of a market). The main aspect of the MVA is to zoom into existing markets to find those people which needs are unmet by existing players.
Business scaling is the process of transformation of a business as the product is validated by wider and wider market segments. Business scaling is about creating traction for a product that fits a small market segment. As the product is validated it becomes critical to build a viable businessmodel. And as the product is offered at wider and wider market segments, it’s important to align product, businessmodel, and organizational design, to enable wider and wider scale.
The market expansion consists in providing a product or service to a broader portion of an existing market or perhaps expanding that market. Or yet, market expansions can be about creating a whole new market. At each step, as a result, a company scales together with the market covered.
In the FourWeekMBA growth matrix, you can apply growth for existing customers by tackling the same problems (gain mode). Or by tackling existing problems, for new customers (expand mode). Or by tackling new problems for existing customers (extend mode). Or perhaps by tackling whole new problems for new customers (reinvent mode).
In the FourWeekMBA Revenue Streams Matrix, revenue streams are classified according to the kind of interactions the business has with its key customers. The first dimension is the “Frequency” of interaction with the key customer. As the second dimension, there is the “Ownership” of the interaction with the key customer.
Revenue model patterns are a way for companies to monetize their business models. A revenue model pattern is a crucial building block of a business model because it informs how the company will generate short-term financial resources to invest back into the business. Thus, the way a company makes money will also influence its overall businessmodel.
A pricingstrategy or model helps companies find the pricing formula in fit with their business models. Thus aligning the customer needs with the product type while trying to enable profitability for the company. A good pricingstrategy aligns the customer with the company’s long term financial sustainability to build a solid businessmodel.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
