Skip to Main Content
HBS Online
  • Courses
    Open Courses Mega Menu
    • Business Essentials
      • Credential of Readiness (CORe)
      • Business Analytics
      • Economics for Managers
      • Financial Accounting
    • Leadership & Management
      • Leadership Principles
      • Management Essentials
      • Negotiation Mastery
      • Organizational Leadership
      • Strategy Execution
      • Power and Influence for Positive Impact
      • Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability
    • Entrepreneurship & Innovation
      • Entrepreneurship Essentials
      • Disruptive Strategy
      • Negotiation Mastery
      • Design Thinking and Innovation
      • Launching Tech Ventures
    • Strategy
      • Strategy Execution
      • Business Strategy
      • Economics for Managers
      • Disruptive Strategy
      • Global Business
      • Sustainable Business Strategy
    • Finance & Accounting
      • Financial Accounting
      • Leading with Finance
      • Alternative Investments
      • Sustainable Investing
    • Business in Society
      • Sustainable Business Strategy
      • Global Business
      • Sustainable Investing
      • Power and Influence for Positive Impact
      • Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability
    • All Courses
  • For Organizations
    Open For Organizations Mega Menu
    • Corporate Learning
      Help your employees master essential business concepts, improve effectiveness, and expand leadership capabilities.
    • Academic Solutions
      Integrate HBS Online courses into your curriculum to support programs and create unique educational opportunities.
    • Need Help?
      • Frequently Asked Questions
      • Contact Us
    • Black, Latinx, and underrepresented minority professionals
      Pathways to Business

      Stories designed to inspire future business leaders.

  • Insights
    Open Insights Mega Menu
    • Business Insights Blog
      • Career Development
      • Communication
      • Decision-Making
      • Earning Your MBA
      • Entrepreneurship & Innovation
      • Finance
      • Leadership
      • Management
      • Negotiation
      • Strategy
    • All Topics
    • Sample Business Lessons and E-Books

      Gain new insights and knowledge from leading faculty and industry experts.

    • Free Guide

      Learn how to formulate a successful business strategy.

  • More Info
    Open More Info Mega Menu
    • Learning Experience
      Master real-world business skills with our immersive platform and engaged community.
    • Certificates, Credentials, & Credits
      Learn how completing courses can boost your resume and move your career forward.
    • Learning Tracks
      Take your career to the next level with this specialization.
    • Financing & Policies
      • Employer Reimbursement
      • Payment & Financial Aid
      • Policies
    • Connect
      • Student Stories
      • Community
    • Need Help?
      • Frequently Asked Questions
      • Request Information
      • Support Portal
    • Apply Now
Login
My Courses
Access your courses and engage with your peers
My Account
Manage your account, applications, and payments.
HBS Home
  • About HBS
  • Academic Programs
  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Research
  • Baker Library
  • Giving
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Initiatives
  • News
  • Recruit
  • Map / Directions
HBS Online
  • Courses
  • Business Essentials
  • Leadership & Management
  • Entrepreneurship & Innovation
  • Strategy
  • Finance & Accounting
  • Business in Society
  • For Organizations
  • Insights
  • More Info
  • About
  • Support Portal
  • Media Coverage
  • Founding Donors
  • Leadership Team
  • Careers
  • My Courses
  • My Account
  • Apply Now
  • …→
  • Harvard Business School→
  • HBS Online→
  • Business Insights→

Business Insights

Harvard Business School Online's Business Insights Blog provides the career insights you need to achieve your goals and gain confidence in your business skills.

 
Filter Results Arrow Down Arrow Up

Topics

Topics

  • Accounting
  • Analytics
  • Business Essentials
  • Business in Society
  • Career Development
  • Communication
  • Community
  • ConneXt
  • Decision-Making
  • Earning Your MBA
  • Entrepreneurship & Innovation
  • Finance
  • Leadership
  • Management
  • Marketing
  • Negotiation
  • News & Events
  • Productivity
  • Staff Spotlight
  • Strategy
  • Student Profiles
  • Technology
  • Work-Life Balance

Courses

Courses

  • Alternative Investments
  • Business Analytics
  • Business Strategy
  • CORe
  • Design Thinking and Innovation
  • Disruptive Strategy
  • Economics for Managers
  • Entrepreneurship Essentials
  • Financial Accounting
  • Global Business
  • Launching Tech Ventures
  • Leadership Principles
  • Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability
  • Leading with Finance
  • Management Essentials
  • Negotiation Mastery
  • Organizational Leadership
  • Power and Influence for Positive Impact
  • Strategy Execution
  • Sustainable Business Strategy
  • Sustainable Investing
Subscribe to the Blog
*
Please complete this required field.
Email must be formatted correctly.
Please complete all required fields.
RSS feed

Filters

Topics

Topics

  • Accounting
  • Analytics
  • Business Essentials
  • Business in Society
  • Career Development
  • Communication
  • Community
  • ConneXt
  • Decision-Making
  • Earning Your MBA
  • Entrepreneurship & Innovation
  • Finance
  • Leadership
  • Management
  • Marketing
  • Negotiation
  • News & Events
  • Productivity
  • Staff Spotlight
  • Strategy
  • Student Profiles
  • Technology
  • Work-Life Balance

Courses

Courses

  • Alternative Investments
  • Business Analytics
  • Business Strategy
  • CORe
  • Design Thinking and Innovation
  • Disruptive Strategy
  • Economics for Managers
  • Entrepreneurship Essentials
  • Financial Accounting
  • Global Business
  • Launching Tech Ventures
  • Leadership Principles
  • Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability
  • Leading with Finance
  • Management Essentials
  • Negotiation Mastery
  • Organizational Leadership
  • Power and Influence for Positive Impact
  • Strategy Execution
  • Sustainable Business Strategy
  • Sustainable Investing
Subscribe to the Blog
*
Please complete this required field.
Email must be formatted correctly.
Please complete all required fields.
RSS feed

Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset: What's the Difference?

Entrepreneur with growth mindset writing on whiteboard
  • 10 Mar 2022
Catherine Cote Author Staff
tag
  • Entrepreneurship & Innovation
  • Entrepreneurship Essentials

One common misconception in entrepreneurship is that you either have what it takes to be an entrepreneur or you don’t. In reality, entrepreneurial skills can be learned and strengthened like any other skill.

“Do you have to be a creative genius to succeed?” asks Harvard Business School Professor William Sahlman in the online course Entrepreneurship Essentials. “Do you have to be young, or technical, or a college dropout, or risk-seeking to become an entrepreneur? I don’t think so. Every person can find opportunities, attract necessary resources, and build teams to bring successful products and services to customers.”

This mindset—that ability and intelligence can be achieved through effort—is called a growth mindset, and it’s an invaluable asset in the startup world.

Here’s a primer on the difference between growth and fixed mindsets, why a growth mindset is essential for entrepreneurship, and how you can achieve and maintain one.


Free E-Book:
So You Want to Be an Entrepreneur: How to Get Started

Access your free e-book today.

DOWNLOAD NOW

Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset

Someone with a growth mindset views intelligence, abilities, and talents as learnable and capable of improvement through effort. On the other hand, someone with a fixed mindset views those same traits as inherently stable and unchangeable over time.

For example, as an aspiring entrepreneur, you need basic finance skills to create your business’s budget and prepare its financial statements. If you have a fixed mindset, you may think, “I’ve never been good with math, let alone financial statements. I’m not cut out to run my own business.”

Now imagine you approach the situation with a growth mindset. You might think, “I don’t have a background in finance, but I can learn and practice those skills until I feel capable.”

The concept of growth and fixed mindsets was coined by psychologist Carol Dweck in her 2006 book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.

According to Dweck, challenging situations can be catastrophic for those with fixed mindsets because of the implication that if they don’t already have the skills or intelligence to complete a task, there’s no chance of improvement.

When you have a growth mindset, you believe you can gain the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed, which makes every challenge a learning opportunity. Given the numerous challenges entrepreneurs face, a growth mindset can be a powerful tool as you work toward your venture’s success.

Related: Must-Have Entrepreneurial Skills for Aspiring Business Owners

4 Reasons Entrepreneurs Need a Growth Mindset

While a growth mindset can benefit anyone, it’s crucial for entrepreneurs. Here are four ways a growth mindset can serve you as you launch and grow your business.

1. It Allows You to Move into New Fields

When you have a growth mindset, your past doesn’t define your future. This can be an asset if you have expertise and experience in another field and want to pursue entrepreneurship.

For example, Indya Wright, former commercial banker and deputy clerk at the Washington, D.C. Superior Court, launched her own public relations and production firm, Artiste House. Rather than let her previous career define her potential, she knew she could learn the language of the startup world through hands-on experience and taking Entrepreneurship Essentials.

“You need to find ways to equip yourself with the skills necessary to sustain your business,” Wright says. “You’re investing in your own success.”

2. It Fosters Resilience

Resilience—the capacity to recover from and move through difficult situations—is critical in the entrepreneurial world. When challenges, setbacks, and failures inevitably arise, your business’s survival depends on your ability to persevere and learn from difficult situations.

In one of Dweck’s studies, her team analyzed students’ brain activity while reviewing mistakes they made on a test. Those with a fixed mindset showed no brain activity when reviewing the mistakes, whereas the brains of those with a growth mindset showed processing activity as mistakes were being reviewed.

A fixed mindset can physically prevent you from learning from mistakes, while a growth mindset can empower you to perceive mistakes as learning opportunities.

3. It Enables You to Iterate on Your Product

“It’s most productive to think of entrepreneurship as an iterative process—a way of managing that involves continually searching for a winning combination of opportunities and resources,” Sahlman says in Entrepreneurship Essentials.

This continual process of testing an idea, learning from the results, and reiterating the product is only possible with a growth mindset.

An entrepreneur with a fixed mindset is likely to view negative feedback as a sign they don’t have the ability to make a valuable product. This can result in avoiding feedback for fear of rejection, untested products and bad product-market fit, or giving up on a venture altogether.

An entrepreneur with a growth mindset, on the other hand, receives negative feedback and constructive criticism and uses it to improve their product offering. With a growth mindset, uncovering your product’s weaknesses doesn’t translate to an inability to create a valuable product. Rather, it enables you to create the best version of it for your target market.

Related: 5 Steps to Validate Your Business Idea

4. It Keeps You Humble

Finally, a growth mindset constantly reminds you that there’s always more to learn. By knowing you have the capacity to improve, a growth mindset can keep you humble throughout your entrepreneurial journey.

This can be especially useful in combatting stagnation. People’s needs, attitudes, and motivations change over time, so periodically reassess your product-market fit. If you get too comfortable with your initial knowledge, you could miss opportunities to grow with your target audience and meet their needs as they arise.

Which HBS Online Entrepreneurship & Innovation Course Is Right for You? | Download Your Free Flowchart

Maintaining a Growth Mindset as an Entrepreneur

If you realize you’ve been living with a fixed mindset, you can make the switch to one centered on growth by giving yourself ample opportunity to learn new things.

Examples of opportunities are networking and knowledge-sharing with other professionals, reading articles and books on topics you’re interested in, and brainstorming and problem-solving with others to gain new perspectives.

Additionally, taking online courses can be an accessible, rewarding way to maintain your growth mindset and remind yourself that you can learn new skills to make your entrepreneurial venture a success.

Are you interested in bolstering your entrepreneurship skills? Explore our four-week online course Entrepreneurship Essentials and our other entrepreneurship and innovation courses to learn to speak the language of the startup world.

About the Author

Catherine Cote is a marketing coordinator at Harvard Business School Online. Prior to joining HBS Online, she worked at an early-stage SaaS startup where she found her passion for writing content, and at a digital consulting agency, where she specialized in SEO. Catherine holds a B.A. from Holy Cross, where she studied psychology, education, and Mandarin Chinese. When not at work, you can find her hiking, performing or watching theatre, or hunting for the best burger in Boston.
 
All FAQs

Top FAQs

How are HBS Online courses delivered?

+–

We offer self-paced programs (with weekly deadlines) on the HBS Online course platform.

Our platform features short, highly produced videos of HBS faculty and guest business experts, interactive graphs and exercises, cold calls to keep you engaged, and opportunities to contribute to a vibrant online community.

Are HBS Online programs available in languages other than English?

+–

We expect to offer our courses in additional languages in the future but, at this time, HBS Online can only be provided in English.

All course content is delivered in written English. Closed captioning in English is available for all videos. There are no live interactions during the course that requires the learner to speak English. Written English proficiency should suffice.

Do I need to come to campus to participate in HBS Online programs?

+–

No, all of our programs are 100 percent online, and available to participants regardless of their location.

How do I enroll in a course?

+–

All programs require the completion of a brief application. The applications vary slightly from program to program, but all ask for some personal background information. You can apply for and enroll in programs here. If you are new to HBS Online, you will be required to set up an account before starting an application for the program of your choice.

Our easy online application is free, and no special documentation is required. All applicants must be at least 18 years of age, proficient in English, and committed to learning and engaging with fellow participants throughout the program.

After submitting your application, you should receive an email confirmation from HBS Online. If you do not receive this email, please check your junk email folders and double-check your account to make sure the application was successfully submitted.

Updates to your application and enrollment status will be shown on your Dashboard. We confirm enrollment eligibility within one week of your application.

Does Harvard Business School Online offer an online MBA?

+–

No, Harvard Business School Online offers business certificate programs.

What are my payment options?

+–

We accept payments via credit card, wire transfer, Western Union, and (when available) bank loan. Some candidates may qualify for scholarships or financial aid, which will be credited against the Program Fee once eligibility is determined. Please refer to the Payment & Financial Aid page for further information.

We also allow you to split your payment across 2 separate credit card transactions or send a payment link email to another person on your behalf. If splitting your payment into 2 transactions, a minimum payment of $350 is required for the first transaction.

In all cases, net Program Fees must be paid in full (in US Dollars) to complete registration.

What are the policies for refunds and deferrals?

+–

After enrolling in a program, you may request a withdrawal with refund (minus a $100 nonrefundable enrollment fee) up until 24 hours after the start of your program. Please review the Program Policies page for more details on refunds and deferrals. If your employer has contracted with HBS Online for participation in a program, or if you elect to enroll in the undergraduate credit option of the Credential of Readiness (CORe) program, note that policies for these options may differ.

 

Sign up for News & Announcements


  • • Please complete this required field.
  • • Email must be formatted correctly.
  • • Please complete all required fields.

Subject Areas

  • Business Essentials
  • Leadership & Management
  • Entrepreneurship & Innovation
  • Strategy
  • Finance & Accounting
  • Business & Society

Quick Links

  • FAQs
  • Contact Us
  • Request Info
  • Apply Now
  • Support Portal

About

  • About Us
  • Media Coverage
  • Founding Donors
  • Leadership Team
  • Careers @ HBS Online

Legal

  • Legal
  • Policies
Harvard Business School
Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College
  • Site Map
  • Trademark Notice
  • Digital Accessibility