Develop an Entrepreneurial Mindset

To be competitive, maintain competitive advantage, and solve problems more effectively, we need to enhance our entrepreneurial mindsets. Business agility and entrepreneurship depend on entrepreneurial mindsets as a source of competitive advantage .

An entrepreneurial mindset is an ability and willingness to continuously learn in response to and in anticipation of environmental changes. An entrepreneurial mindset is essential to business agility, which is the ability of our organizations to innovate and commercialize for the purpose of economic and social renewal.

We can develop our entrepreneurial competencies if we are willing to do what is really required to develop entrepreneurial mindsets. The effort required to develop a true entrepreneurial mindset pays off with a greater ability to navigate complexity and uncertainty, enhanced efficiency, and consistent goal achievement.

The question is whether we want to stick with what is comfortable and get the same results, or whether we are willing to do some rethinking and evolving so we can achieve more with much greater satisfaction, but without necessarily needing more resources.

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Table of Contents

1.?????We Can Reverse the Decades-Long Decline in Business Agility, Entrepreneurship, and Entrepreneurial Mindsets

2.?????Entrepreneurial Mindsets Depend on Learning and Curiosity

3.?????Developing Entrepreneurial Mindsets Requires a (Manageable) Leap

4.?????Some Specific Competencies For Entrepreneurial Mindsets

5.?????Conclusion

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We Can Reverse the Decades-Long Decline in Business Agility, Entrepreneurship, and Entrepreneurial Mindsets

Despite the importance of business agility, entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial mindsets to ourselves, our businesses, and our communities, as outlined in a previous article , they have been in decline for decades.

Learning is at the root of entrepreneurial mindsets, business agility, and the ability to develop sustainable competitive advantage. But current learning tends to focus more on more information and more facts. There isn't enough emphasis on curiosity, true critical thinking (eg really understanding the problem), and learning-to-learn (so that we can also address challenges more effectively and change behavior and improve performance).

Without curiosity and real learning competencies, we don't have real entrepreneurial mindsets which allow us to build new ventures, or be intrapreneurial and innovative.

Fortunately, business agility, entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial mindsets are not competencies we inherit at birth. Research shows we can develop entrepreneurial competencies and mindsets.

Entrepreneurial Mindsets Depend on Learning and Curiosity

Business agility and entrepreneurship can be described as creating value in the face of uncertainty, ambiguity, and complexity. This is a process of effectuation is:

• co-creating?the future with stakeholders and available resources,
• through an ongoing?process?of innovation (exploration and experimentation) and commercialization (exploitation).?

Co-creating the future, innovating, and commercializing depend on curiosity and learning, which are a constructive or creative version of conflict:

1.?????creative abrasion: exploring with curiosity & learning (to understand what could be);

2.?????creative agility: experimenting & learning (to understand what is); and,

3.?????creative resolution: evolving & learning (to change behavior appropriately and improve performance).

The entrepreneurial mindset we need to co-create the future is made up of several mindsets that use different types of learning:

• a growth mindset : recognizing and embracing the need to continuously learn and transform personally,
• body-wisdom : being able to learn and leverage our physiological signals (sometimes felt as emotions) for decision-making,
• a collaborative mindset : being able and willing to engage in co-learning and co-creation, and
• a holistic mindset : being able and willing to learn about and embrace complex, nuanced, linear, and non-linear environments.

Learning is a multi-faceted, intentional, and experiential process that results in behavior change. By deliberately developing our learning competencies, and our ability to learn-to-learn, we can strengthen our business agility and entrepreneurial mindsets.

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Developing Entrepreneurial Mindsets Requires a (Manageable) Leap

Current Approaches are Insufficient to Develop Entrepreneurial Mindsets

Current approaches to teaching business, entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial competencies are insufficient (at best).

The approaches can be summed up as teaching someone about ingredients needed for making a cake, but then being surprised they can’t figure out how to make a cake, how to use a range of equipment and techniques, nor how to adapt recipes to the context (eg elevation and humidity; variations in ingredients; baking with electricity, wood, or gas).

Entrepreneurial and business education usually:

• Focuses on technical skills and mechanical processes. These ‘static recipes’ are sufficient for very predictable environments, but not so much for ambiguity, uncertainty, and complexity. The mechanistic approach to teaching is frequently cited as killing creativity and destroying curiosity .
• Assumes learning and behavior change happen automatically. Despite there being so much evidence that they don’t. They need to be intentionally and deliberately developed.
• Ignores curiosity and the need to learn-to-learn. Learning is a competency like any other that must continuously be developed and honed. It requires exploration and curiosity to find out what is possible, experimentation to test ideas out, and exploitation to capture value. If any top athlete stops questioning what is possible, and stops practicing, they not only become less competitive, but they also lose their ability to increase their competitive edge. Why would this be different in business?

Fortunately, business agility, entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial mindsets can be developed with the right approaches.

We Need New Approaches to Develop Entrepreneurial Mindsets and Increase Our Competitive Advantage

In addition to teaching technical skills (mostly cognitive processes), we need to also develop experiential competencies. Skills and knowledge are part of competencies, but they tend to be task-based. In contrast, competencies are the ability – developed from experiential learning – to use those skills and knowledge to achieve goals.

Entrepreneurial and business education overlook the comprehensive , tacit , and experiential competencies necessary to successfully innovate and commercialize – the ability to actually generate results. Experiential competencies are often described as (expert) intuition.

Experiential competencies, are cognitive and physiological processes that determine if, when, and how to use technical knowledge

To develop experiential competencies, and to be able to navigate the emotions arising from uncertainty, complexity, and challenges, we also need to develop physiological competencies.

Physiological signals are signals generated by our bodies that are warnings and signals of opportunity. They allow us to access unique information and better understanding of cognitive information. We can develop body wisdom and learn to work WITH our physiological signals (rather than trying to control or suppress them). This allows us to make better decisions, and evolve more effectively personally and organizationally.

To develop technical and experiential/physiological competencies, we need to be intentional. Learning must be deliberately structured to improve performance by practicing effectively, getting relevant and timely feedback, and engaging in reflection (cognitive) and reflexion (physiological).

Deliberate practice is not just to get better at the competencies we already know, we must also learn-to-learn better. Learning-to-learn is bigger than meta-cognition, which is a mostly cognitive process. Body-mind processes must also be leveraged to develop experiential competencies.

Multiple fields of research (sports, arts, sciences) show that:

• Deliberate practice results in exceptional performance that exceeds innate talent.
• Experiential and physiological competencies, and learning-to-learn create sustainable competitive advantage.

By deliberately developing our technical, experiential, and physiological competencies, and our ability to learn-to-learn, we can strengthen our business agility and entrepreneurial mindsets.

Some Specific Competencies For Entrepreneurial Mindsets

Some specific competencies that are critical for entrepreneurial mindsets include:

• Engaging in collaboration , creation , and creative conflict (vs destructive conflict) so we can challenge our assumptions and the status quo.
• Being able to mitigate biases and stress so we can truly learn (ie change behaviors).
• Learning to think more systemically
• Leadership skills necessary to support entrepreneurial mindsets and foster business agility include:
• Being able to increase our own and our team’s resilience and psychological safety .
• Motivating people to engage in entrepreneurship/intrapreneurship and graduated creative conflict .?
• Empowering people to co-create strategy (an experimental process) and take ownership .

Conclusion

We live in an increasingly unpredictable world with complex challenges. Therefore, the decades-long decline in business agility, entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial mindsets is extremely concerning – these are essential to surviving and thriving in unpredictable, uncertain, complex situations.

To develop entrepreneurial mindsets and business agility, we need to rethink what competencies we develop, and how we develop them. Currently, technical skills, the most basic ingredients are being taught. However, it is possible to develop experiential, physiological, and learning competencies.

Developing these competencies not only results in competiveness, they also result in the ability to develop sustainable competitive advantage. Ironically, the frustration people feel by using the ‘recipe-based’ approach can be reduced with a more entrepreneurial approach. And an entrepreneurial approach can be a lot more fun as well, once the competencies and mindset have been developed.

Will you stick with the familiar approaches you’ve been taught? Or are you ready to enhance your entrepreneurial mindset and develop sustainable competitive advantage?

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How do you increase your entrepreneurial mindset and your organization’s business agility? What works for you?

If you find this article valuable, please ‘Like’ or comment. I’d love to hear your perspective!

If you’d like to explore how you could increase your and your team’s competitive advantage and breakthrough results, please connect with me.

Catarina von Maydell, MBA, works with leaders and teams to facilitate sustainable breakthrough performance improvement and growth.

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