Dweck's research reveals two distinct mindsets that shape our response to challenges and setbacks:
<ul>
<li>Fixed Mindset: Intelligence is static; success means proving you're smart; failure indicates deficiency</li>
<li>Growth Mindset: Intelligence develops through effort; success comes from learning; failure provides valuable feedback</li>
</ul>
These mindsets create different behaviors: fixed mindsets avoid challenges that might reveal inadequacy; growth mindsets embrace challenges as growth opportunities. This explains why equally talented people achieve dramatically different outcomes.

Fixed vs. Growth Mindset

The word yet bridges present struggle and future success, embodying growth mindset in one linguistic shift:
<ul>
<li>Reframes failures as temporary states, not permanent conditions</li>
<li>Creates a path forward rather than a dead end</li>
<li>Acknowledges reality while maintaining potential</li>
<li>Shifts focus from judgment to journey</li>
</ul>
This simple change activates different neural pathways. Students hearing not yet instead of failing show greater persistence, better strategies, and higher achievement. The brain responds differently to temporary versus permanent ability assessments.

The Power of Yet

Becoming is better than being.

Research reveals praise has powerful effects on mindset development:<ul><li>Praising intelligence (you're so smart) promotes fixed mindsets</li><li>Praising process (you worked hard) fosters growth mindsets</li><li>Intelligence praise creates vulnerability to setbacks</li><li>Process praise builds resilience</li></ul>Studies show children praised for intelligence perform worse after difficulty, while those praised for effort maintain or improve. The irony: well-intended smart praise actually undermines the qualities parents hope to encourage.

Praise That Backfires

Labels—even positive ones—can foster fixed mindsets with damaging effects:<ul><li>Terms like gifted or natural imply unchangeable qualities</li><li>Fixed-trait identities create contingent self-worth</li><li>This breeds vulnerability when facing challenges requiring effort</li><li>Fear of losing valued labels leads to avoiding growth opportunities</li></ul>Research shows many gifted students later avoid challenges, underperform, and experience anxiety about maintaining their status as smart.

The Danger of Labels

Mindsets spread through social environments via explicit and implicit signals:
<ul>
<li>Leaders transmit beliefs through what they emphasize and reward</li>
<li>Parents convey mindsets in how they frame success and failure</li>
<li>Organizations develop collective mindsets that shape culture</li>
<li>Subtle cues about what's valued impact prevailing attitudes</li>
</ul>
This social dimension explains why transformations require leadership mindset shifts first. When leaders embody growth principles, cultures shift toward valuing development over fixed performance.

Mindsets Are Contagious

Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better?

Elite performance correlates strongly with growth mindset characteristics:<ul><li>Champions view setbacks as information, not judgment</li><li>They focus on improvement rather than proving ability</li><li>They study failure methodically instead of avoiding it</li><li>They target weaknesses rather than showcasing strengths</li></ul>Studies of Olympians, musicians, and business leaders show top performers rarely credit innate talent. Instead, they point to their approach to practice, feedback, and development as the key differentiator.

The Mindset of Champions

Research reveals how mindsets shape our relationships:
<ul>
<li>Fixed mindset leads to:</li>
<li>Believing perfect relationships shouldn't require work</li>
<li>Seeing problems as signs of incompatibility</li>
<li>Keeping score and assigning blame</li>
<li>Growth mindset creates:</li>
<li>Expecting relationships to develop through challenges</li>
<li>Viewing problems as opportunities for mutual growth</li>
<li>Focusing on development rather than evaluation</li>
</ul>
Studies show growth-minded couples maintain satisfaction longer, resolve conflicts better, and show greater resilience through transitions.

Mindset in Relationships

Organizations develop collective mindsets that impact performance:<ul><li>Fixed-mindset companies typically:</li><li>Worship star talent and genius leaders</li><li>Hide weaknesses and mistakes</li><li>Resist change and feedback</li><li>Growth-mindset organizations tend to:</li><li>Value learning and development</li><li>Share information openly, including failures</li><li>Adapt readily to changing conditions</li></ul>Research shows growth-minded companies outperform peers during disruption, maintain higher engagement, and innovate more. Their advantage comes from different interpretations of challenges, not different challenges.

The Business of Growth

In a growth mindset, challenges are exciting rather than threatening. So rather than thinking, oh, I'm going to reveal my weaknesses, you say, wow, here's a chance to grow.

Dweck's transformative finding is that mindsets can change through targeted interventions:<ul><li>Teaching neuroplasticity shifts thinking about ability</li><li>Learning that struggle builds neural connections reframes difficulty</li><li>Brief interventions create lasting performance changes</li><li>Effective approaches focus on how abilities develop</li></ul>Studies show students receiving mindset interventions improve motivation and performance immediately. These changes persist and amplify as new mindsets create positive loops of effort and achievement.

Changing Mindsets

The journey mindset represents the fullest expression of growth-oriented thinking:
<ul>
<li>Success means development rather than destination</li>
<li>The key question shifts from Am I successful? to Am I growing?</li>
<li>Focus moves from external validation to internal progress</li>
<li>Setbacks become part of the growth narrative</li>
</ul>
This mindset creates psychological freedom, replacing anxiety with engagement. Research shows journey-oriented people report greater satisfaction, more authentic relationships, and sustained motivation—even after achieving conventional success.

The Journey Mindset

Ever wonder why some people crumble under failure while others thrive? Carol Dweck's groundbreaking research reveals it's all about mindset—the way you view your abilities and intelligence. This isn't just feel-good psychology; it's backed by decades of research showing how your beliefs literally create your reality. The best part? You can actually change your mindset at any age and transform your potential. Read this and you'll never look at success the same way again!

From the renowned psychologist who introduced the world to “growth mindset” comes this updated edition of the million-copy bestseller—featuring transformative insights into redefining success, building lifelong resilience, and supercharging self-improvement. “Through clever research studies and engaging writing, Dweck illuminates how our beliefs about our capabilities exert tremendous influence on how we learn and which paths we take in life.”—Bill Gates, GatesNotes “It’s not always the people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest.” After decades of research, world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., discovered a simple but groundbreaking idea: the power of mindset. In this brilliant book, she shows how success in school, work, sports, the arts, and almost every area of human endeavor can be dramatically influenced by how we think about our talents and abilities. People with a fixed mindset—those who believe that abilities are fixed—are less likely to flourish than those with a growth mindset—those who believe that abilities can be developed. Mindset reveals how great parents, teachers, managers, and athletes can put this idea to use to foster outstanding accomplishment. In this edition, Dweck offers new insights into her now famous and broadly embraced concept. She introduces a phenomenon she calls false growth mindset and guides people toward adopting a deeper, truer growth mindset. She also expands the mindset concept beyond the individual, applying it to the cultures of groups and organizations. With the right mindset, you can motivate those you lead, teach, and love—to transform their lives and your own.

Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., is one of the world’s leading researchers in the field of motivation and is the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. Her research has focused on why people succeed and how to foster success. She has held professorships at Columbia and Harvard Universities, has lectured all over the world, and has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her scholarly book Self-Theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development was named Book of the Year by the World Education Federation. Her work has been featured in such publications as The New Yorker, Time, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, and she has appeared on Today and 20/20.

Carol S. Dweck

Mindset

People will tell you to hire for intelligence, but intelligence is overrated. Other hiring criteria are equally or more important.  <ul><li>Drive. Self-motivation will cause people to push and push until they succeed. </li><li>Curiosity. Anyone who loves what they do will be intensely curious about it.</li><li>Ethics. Ethics are hard to test for, but if you see any whiff of less than stellar ethics, avoid the candidate.</li></ul>

Criteria for hiring great people

You can see drive in a candidate's eyes and background.<ul><li>Look for what someone has done, not just been involved in or been part of. For example, they started a business in high school. They started and ran a nonprofit in high school.</li><li>If you can't find anything - if the candidate has just followed the rules their whole lives without achieving something distinct and notable, they probably aren't driven. You're not going to change them.</li></ul>

Drive

Someone who loves what they do will read about it, study it, talk to other people about it, immerse themselves in it and work like anything to stay current. Anyone who isn't curious doesn't love what they do.  And you should hire people who love what they do.

Curiosity

Unethical people are unethical by nature, and the odds of conversion are quite low. Ministers and priests should give people another chance, not hiring managers at startups.<ul><li>One way to test for honesty is to see how they react when they don't know something.  They'll either say they don't know, or they'll talk nonsense and hope you won't notice. </li><li>If they're trying to deceive you during the hiring process, they'll deceive you once they're onboard.</li></ul>

Ethics

<ol><li>Have a written hiring process and ensure everyone has a paper copy of it. Many startups have a random hiring process and hire randomly.</li><li>Do basic skills tests. Ask them basic questions about how to do things in their domain. For a sales rep, have them sell you on your product all the way to a closed deal. For a marketing person, have them whiteboard out a launch for your new product. </li><li>Plan out and write down interview questions.</li><li>Pay attention to the little details during the interview process to show what the person will be like.</li><li>Pay attention to the small things during the reference calls.</li></ol>

How to run the hiring process

<ul><li>Know that while you're going to hate firing someone, you'll feel way better after the fact.</li><li>Realise that the great people on your team will be happy that you've done it as they knew the person wasn't working out. But watch how you fire people, as others will watch how you deal with people.</li><li>Realise that you're often doing the person a favour as you're releasing them from a role where they won't get promoted or valued.</li></ul>Be sure to value the people on your team as they are exceptional.

Fixing hiring mistakes

An archive of the best articles from Marc Andreessen’s now defunct blog

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Marc Andreessen: How to hire the best people you’ve ever worked with

People think that memory is supposed to be perfect. However, our brains are not designed to remember everything. People over the age of 50 often think all kinds of forgetting mean they have Alzheimer's. They're always forgetting names, and if they don't write down what they have to do later, they won't remember to do it. However, this is normal for all people.

Forgetfulness is normal

Alzheimer's starts with a sticky protein called 'amyloid beta.' It will bind to itself and form 'amyloid plaques.' If you have enough amyloid plaques accumulated in your brain, it will reach a tipping point at some stage that causes neurofibrillary tangles, neuroinflammation, cell death, and other symptoms we classically know as Alzheimer's. Before that tipping point, you're symptom-free. After the tipping point, the glitches in memory formation and retrieval are different.

How Alzheimer's start

Alzheimer's starts in your hippocampus, the place responsible for forming new memories. So, the very first symptoms of Alzheimer's will be not remembering what someone said a few minutes ago, repeating yourself over and over because you don't remember what you just said, not remembering what happened last week, even if it was meaningful. Things you would normally remember from last week won't get consolidated.

Alzheimer symptoms

It will invade your frontal lobe, so you'll have problems with problem-solving and decision-making. It will invade parts of your brain that have to do with where things are in space, so you might get lost in your neighbourhood. It will invade the parts of your brain that have to do with language so that you will have trouble to find the right words more and more. The disease will then move on to your limbic system and cause changes in emotion and personality.

Alzheimer's doesn't just stay in your hippocampus

The accumulation of amyloid plaques takes 15 to 20 years and can be influenced by how we live. Things that influence the amyloid plaque levels.<ol><li>Sleep. While you sleep, the glial cells in your brain clear away all the metabolic debris and amyloid beta accumulated in your brain while you were awake.</li><li>Diet. A Mediterranean diet can reduce your risk of Alzheimer's by almost half.</li><li>Exercise. A brisk walk for 30 minutes, four to five times a week, is enough to decrease your amyloid plaque levels.</li><li>Chronic stress will increase your risk of developing Alzheimer's.</li><li>Learning something new.</li></ol>

The good news

Every time you learn something new, you build new synapses, neural connections, and a 'cognitive reserve.' If someone with Alzheimer's built a lot of redundant connections,  they can dance around those roadblocks and still get to the memory they need.  So, learning new things gives a way to build an Alzheimer-resistant brain.

Learning something new

Only 2% of Alzheimer’s is 100% genetic. The rest is up to your daily habits. Subscribe to Big Think on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/c/bigthink Up Next ► 4 ways to hack your memory https://youtu.be/SCsztDMGP7o People want a perfect memory. They wish that they can remember everything that they want to remember. But it doesn't work like that. Most people over the age of 50 think that forgetting someone's name or forgetting why they went into the kitchen is a sign of Alzheimer's. It isn't. Most of our forgetfulness is perfectly normal. If you are worried about developing Alzheimer's or another form of dementia, some simple lifestyle modifications can help prevent it: getting enough sleep, exercising, eating a balanced diet, and managing stress. Read the video transcript ► https://bigthink.com/videos/cognitive-decline/ 00:00 The truth about memory & forgetting 01:12 Alzheimer's cause & symptoms 04:21 You need sleep 05:13 Eat a healthy diet 05:45 Exercise, even a little bit 06:15 Reduce stress levels 07:15 Always learn new things 08:39 The good news ... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About Lisa Genova: Lisa Genova is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Still Alice, Left Neglected, Love Anthony, Inside the O’Briens, and Every Note Played. Still Alice was adapted into an Oscar-winning film starring Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin, and Kristen Stewart. Lisa graduated valedictorian from Bates College with a degree in biopsychology and holds a PhD in neuroscience from Harvard University. She travels worldwide speaking about the neurological diseases she writes about and has appeared on The Dr. Oz Show, Today, PBS NewsHour, CNN, and NPR. Her TED talk, “What You Can Do to Prevent Alzheimer’s,” has been viewed more than five million times. The New York Times bestseller REMEMBER is her first work of nonfiction. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Read more of our stories on cognitive decline: Your personality is linked to risk of dementia and cognitive decline ► https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/personality-mental-health/ Is sleeping longer than 6.5 hours a night associated with cognitive decline? ► https://bigthink.com/health/sleep-cognitive-decline/ Risk factors that determine whether you’re more or less likely to develop cognitive decline ► https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/risk-factors-cognitive-decline/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About Big Think | Smarter Faster™ ► Big Think The leading source of expert-driven, educational content. With thousands of videos, featuring experts ranging from Bill Clinton to Bill Nye, Big Think helps you get smarter, faster by exploring the big ideas and core skills that define knowledge in the 21st century. ► Big Think+ Make your business smarter, faster: https://bigthink.com/plus/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Want more Big Think? ► Daily editorial features: https://bigthink.com/popular/ ► Get the best of Big Think right to your inbox: https://bigthink.com/st/newsletter ► Facebook: https://bigth.ink/facebook ► Instagram: https://bigth.ink/Instagram ► Twitter: https://bigth.ink/twitter

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Only 2% of Alzheimer’s is 100% genetic. The rest is up to your daily habits.

Subscribe to Big Think on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/c/bigthink 
Up Next ► 4 ways to hack your memory https://youtu.be/SCsztDMGP7o

People want a perfect memory. They wish that they can remember everything that they want to remember. But it doesn't work like that.

Most people over the age of 50 think that forgetting someone's name or forgetting why they went into the kitchen is a sign of Alzheimer's. It isn't. Most of our forgetfulness is perfectly normal.

If you are worried about developing Alzheimer's or another form of dementia, some simple lifestyle modifications can help prevent it: getting enough sleep, exercising, eating a balanced diet, and managing stress.

Read the video transcript ► https://bigthink.com/videos/cognitive-decline/

00:00 The truth about memory & forgetting
01:12 Alzheimer's cause & symptoms
04:21 You need sleep
05:13 Eat a healthy diet
05:45 Exercise, even a little bit
06:15 Reduce stress levels
07:15 Always learn new things
08:39 The good news ...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

About Lisa Genova:
Lisa Genova is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Still Alice, Left Neglected, Love Anthony, Inside the O’Briens, and Every Note Played. Still Alice was adapted into an Oscar-winning film starring Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin, and Kristen Stewart. Lisa graduated valedictorian from Bates College with a degree in biopsychology and holds a PhD in neuroscience from Harvard University. She travels worldwide speaking about the neurological diseases she writes about and has appeared on The Dr. Oz Show, Today, PBS NewsHour, CNN, and NPR. Her TED talk, “What You Can Do to Prevent Alzheimer’s,” has been viewed more than five million times. The New York Times bestseller REMEMBER is her first work of nonfiction.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Read more of our stories on cognitive decline: 
Your personality is linked to risk of dementia and cognitive decline
 ► https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/personality-mental-health/ 
Is sleeping longer than 6.5 hours a night associated with cognitive decline?
 ► https://bigthink.com/health/sleep-cognitive-decline/ 
Risk factors that determine whether you’re more or less likely to develop cognitive decline
 ► https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/risk-factors-cognitive-decline/ 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

About Big Think | Smarter Faster™
► Big Think 
The leading source of expert-driven, educational content. With thousands of videos, featuring experts ranging from Bill Clinton to Bill Nye, Big Think helps you get smarter, faster by exploring the big ideas and core skills that define knowledge in the 21st century. 
► Big Think+
Make your business smarter, faster: https://bigthink.com/plus/

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Big Think is the leading source of expert-driven, actionable, educational content -- with thousands of videos, featuring experts ranging from Bill Clinton to Bill Nye, we help you get smarter, faster. Get actionable lessons from the world’s greatest thinkers & doers. Our experts are either disrupting or leading their respective fields. We aim to help you explore the big ideas and core skills that define knowledge in the 21st century, so you can apply them to the questions and challenges in your own life. Other Frequent contributors include Michio Kaku & Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

Head to bigthink.com for a multitude of articles just as informative and satisfying as our videos. New articles posted daily on a range of intellectual topics. ​Join Big Think+ to gain access to an immense library of content. It features insight from many of the most celebrated and intelligent individuals in the world today.

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5 ways to build an Alzheimer’s-resistant brain | Lisa Genova

Humans have an innate language instinct, which allows them to tackle communication on a whole other level.<ul><li>Since children learn grammar without studying it, they must have an innate capability to understand it.</li><li>There are two central principles behind all languages, which make them learnable.</li><li>You don’t have to worry about correct grammar so much, as its rules are only one part of using language correctly.</li></ul>

A Natural At Learning Languages

<ul><li> Language is the biological adaptation to communicate.</li><li> There have been anthropological studies of tribes that had no contact with the larger world until the 1920s. Among those tribes, language was acquired seamlessly, without specific instruction. </li><li>The human capacity for language is termed by the author as “Mentalese.” </li><li>Humans acquired language through their biology. This innate possession of language a “Universal Grammar.”</li><li>This proclamation ran counter to the social science theories of the time, which contended that language had to be deliberately taught by adults.</li></ul>

Defining Language

Since children learn languages as early as 18 months old, but can only learn from observing adults that do it the right way, they have no way of actively telling what’s right from wrong – they’re not studying languages, they just absorb them.Yet they still apply the right rules at the right time. For example, even deaf children apply the correct grammar, just by learning sign language from their parents.

Early Instinct

Children have a “window” for maximum language learning, while adults tend to have trouble learning a second language. This window must exist because children around four years old learn grammar and vocabulary so quickly; this exponential learning cannot be explained by adult intervention or guidance. Language learning can be encouraged, and children must be in a social environment to absorb language, but the exact words they remember and the grammar they display probably has a biological basis.

The Window To Learn A Language

All languages are based on the same two core principles.How come we can talk so effortlessly to one another? What is it about language that makes it so easy to communicate with it? There are two forces at play here:<ul><li>The arbitrariness of the sign.</li><li>Our infinite use of finite media.</li></ul>

The Two Core Principles

The form words take doesn’t have a direct relation to their meaning.For example the word “cat” doesn’t sound like a cat. The sound cats make is “meow” and they’re silent when they walk, whereas “cat” is a pretty strong, snappy, short and loud word.This is a good thing, because it keeps us from trying to decipher what the word “cat” means by thinking about the way it sounds and instead lets us jump instantly to the result, because we’ve paired the word with the image through generations of rote learning instead.

Signs Are Arbitrary

This principle allows us to express anything and everything, because even though the number of words in any given language is limited, the number of combinations of words isn’t. Since we use the rules of grammar to create our own sentences, we’re not limited in how much we can express, which makes it easier to get your point across.

Infinite Use Of Finite Media

Grammar is a crucial part of language, and it pays to know it well. However, while you’d be punished horribly in school in the 1920s for bad grammar, today it’s not such a big deal, mainly because grammar rules are only one type of rules that determine how well you use language.Grammar rules are prescriptive, which means they tell us how we’re supposed to talk or write. More and more though, scientists are concerned with descriptive rules, which describe how we actually talk.

Grammar Is Getting Worse, But It's Okay

You can be very much descriptively correct with your grammar, while being wrong in a prescriptive sense, just like a driver can follow the rules of physics in his car while breaking the laws of the country he’s driving in. Correct grammar is very much a relative thing, so don’t stress too much about it!

The Right Grammar Is Subjective

The theory that language is an instinct has opened up the possibility that humans have had access to language learning for about 2.5 million years. There are specific genes and regions of the brain that develop to allow the individual to practice language.While popular media accounts claim that chimpanzees can learn American Sign Language, most data suggest that chimpanzees are not mentally wired to acquire language. They lack the language instinct that humans possess.

Our Brains Are Hard-Wired For Learning Language

The audible signals people can produce are not a series of crisp beeps like on a touch-tone phone. Speech is a river of breath, bent into hisses and hums by the soft flesh of the mouth and throat.

Humans are so innately hardwired for language that they can no more suppress their ability to learn and use language than they can suppress the instinct to pull a hand back from a hot surface.

 We are born with an innate capability to understand languages.

The classic book on the development of human language by the world’s leading expert on language and the mind. In this classic, the world's expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution. The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America. This edition includes an update on advances in the science of language since The Language Instinct was first published.

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Books

"A brilliant, witty, and altogether satisfying book." — New York Times Book ReviewThe classic work on the development of human language by the world’s leading expert on language and the mindIn The Language Instinct, the world's expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution. The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America. This edition includes an update on advances in the science of language since The Language Instinct was first published.

Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.

Steven Pinker

The Language Instinct

<ul><li>Most adults can’t remember anything from before they were 2 or 3 years old</li><li>Autobiographical memories often involve a sense of time passing, which is not something infants can think about until much later</li><li>Any memories we have of events that happened before the age of 2/3 might have been constructed by someone else’s retelling of an event.</li></ul>

Remembering Our Youngest Years: Key Points

<ul><li>The inability to form memories isn't what keeps us from remembering things from when we were babies.</li><li>Memories aren't always exact replicas of what actually happened to us; they can be constructed and reconstructed over time</li><li>In fact, children are especially susceptible to suggestion in their remembering of events.</li></ul>

Autobiographical Memory

<ul><li>Even as we get older, our memories don't get filed away into our brains like video clips.</li><li>They can fade, and they are susceptible to change, especially when we share these memories with others who might retell them from a different perspective.</li><li>If we want to remember more from our earliest days, the best thing we can do is to talk to other people who were there-our loved ones.</li></ul>

Memories And The Influence Of Other People

Even though we may not remember our infancies, infants can form memories.

Why We Can’t Remember Our Youngest Years

Unfortunately, the power of the idea itself isn't enough. Even combining the idea and working insane hours to make it a reality isn't enough. The biggest problem with the creative mind is that oftentimes, it's too off the scale.The creative mind tends to flock and surround itself with others who can see the vision (or at least can imagine it well enough). While this reinforces the power of the idea and can even make the quality of the idea better through collaboration and brainstorming, it has the unintended effect of isolating people who "don't get it" as either dumb or lacking vision.

Powerful ideas aren't enough to build a business

The reality is that most of the people who get written off as not understanding the big picture would probably be supporters of the idea . The problem isn't the people, the problem is in the way that the creative vision is communicated.Most of the time, because the creative person gets so wrapped up in their own world, they forget how to translate what they see into a version that the average person can understand. Because the vision never gets translated into a way that the average person can understand, it never gets momentum.

Don't write people off as being 'unable' to understand your vision

More often, they're a couple of small changes, communicated extremely well, and showcased in a way that the highest number of people can understand without having to think too hard. So the next time your brilliant idea -- whether it be a pitch for a company, a new product, or a movement -- isn't getting traction, don't think that it's because everyone else doesn't "get it." Focus on how you can communicate and show the idea visually to people in a better way.

True creative genius is in how the idea is communicated, not the idea itself

The power of the idea is a start, but it's not enough.

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The Creativity Myth of Entrepreneurship and What Really Matters to Grow

When startups and their investors partner to raise capital and fund scale, there is an opportunity to take a look at their existing human capital structure and plan a more purposeful road map to support their growth.While the average check size has grown among <a href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/topic/venture-capital">venture capital</a> (VC) firms, the success rate of their portfolio companies hasn’t. <a href="https://www.hbs.edu/news/Pages/item.aspx?num=487">Harvard Business School</a> notes that in spite of the increased cash infusion, 75% of VC-backed <a href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/topic/startups">startups</a> still fail.

Growing Outwards

Failure can be attributed to a variety of unforeseen or unavoidable factors, often coming from external circumstances out of our control. However, as leaders and investors, we must ask ourselves, What are those things in my <a href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/topic/company">company</a> that we can control, especially at critical moments of growth? And with that question comes a look inward into the construct of the organization itself. One of the most often overlooked but integral components of this is <a href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/333102">human capital</a>.

Startup Failure

The bottom line is that when startups and their investor's partner to raise capital and fund scale, there is an opportunity to take a look at their existing human capital structure and plan a more purposeful road map to support their growth. Here are five keys to managing human capital through hyper-growth.

A Purposeful Road Map

Before thinking about the “what next” understand the “what now” For example, have you identified the existing team members who are integral to your company’s future success? Have you put together growth-supportive <a href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/300515">compensation packages</a> to ensure their continued commitment?

Tie Your Internal Shoelaces

Investors expect their capital to be put to work expediently and efficiently. With that, comes the need for rapid but effective hiring. However, the support to manage such hiring is often an afterthought, a mad scramble for resources once an event is complete. Prior to a fundraising, transaction or growth launch, it is important to put the recruitment team in place and set the foundation for its human capital alignment.

Hire an Internal Recruiting Team

As your company grows, its core may continue, but its characteristics will inevitably change. It’s like a baby turning into a toddler. It’s so important that as your company continues through key phases of its growth life cycle, leadership defines what it wants post-growth to look like, how it wants to behave and what it wants to be known for. In short, the company needs to create a new post-growth archetype.

Create a New Company Archetype

As the company turns on the growth fire hose and starts running a flowing stream of <a href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/383196">investment cash</a>, it will inevitably take on a new and more mature persona. Companies know that with growth comes growing pains, and it is within their power to plan accordingly. Change management is necessary, but many times, it comes into play only at the point when dysfunction arises. Often, that can be too late.

Pre-Allocate a Percentage of Your Fundraise for Change Management Integration and Training

Successful growth isn’t just about revenue, eyeballs or market share. So, create a comprehensive growth rubric — the key components that leadership will continuously measure the company against to define successful progress. This growth rubric can be used before, during and after transition phases, benchmarking against individual success metrics while course-correcting where needed.

Define Your Growth Rubric

The growth company of today has a unique opportunity to develop a more self-aware plan. As part of the securing of capital, it is up to the company and its investors to develop a comprehensive strategy for a healthy scale. Every VC has investors to appease, and their reports are chock-full of metrics such as revenue, compound annual growth rate (CAGR) and customer acquisition.

A Self-Aware Plan

As leaders, we have an opportunity to also hold ourselves accountable for internal metrics such as hiring efficiency, retention rate, <a href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/368614">employee satisfaction</a> and rate of internal promotion. Human capital is the engine under the flashy hood, and it is ultimately what will make the fast car last throughout the growth journey.

The Bottom Line

When startups and their investors partner to raise capital and fund scale, there is an opportunity to take a look at their existing human capital structure and plan a more purposeful road map to support its growth.

Discover the world of business and economics.

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Economics

business

Business

Looking Inward to Grow Outward: 5 Keys to Managing Human Capital Through Hyper-Growth

Tim Westergren was a rock musician before he became a startup founder. His music genome project was the core technology used for Pandora. Tim Westergren founded Pandora in January 2000. The goal was to "capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level" using a matching algorithm and compare them to other songs for a better recommendation experience. However, at the peak of the dot-com bubble in March 2001, the doors slam shut behind them.

The music genome project

At the start of 2001, they began to stretch their money out and asked employees to defer their salaries. Tim maxed out his 11 credit cards, and they stopped paying their employees at the end of 2001. About 50 people worked for two years without getting paid to get them across the bridge. Tim pitched Pandora 348 times before getting their second round of financing. They raised 9 million dollars for the 2nd round. Two million went out the next day to pay the salaries. Today, the company has over 6 million monthly subscribers.

Not giving up

Two things worked in their favour: <ul><li>The product was magical. Everyone was excited about the product they've built. Investors were offered password-protected access to the product.</li><li>The company was resilient. When the company went through tough times, the founders were the first to defer. This inspired the staff to continue without salaries. </li></ul>

The project that wouldn't die

In the early days of Pandora, it was all about bringing together people that were inspired by an idea that mattered. The key moments in the first 5 years of Pandora were when Tim influenced important people to make decisions that helped them. You have to be creative to influence people. You have to create crumbed trails that will get you to key decision-makers. For example, Tim is a good basketball player. Once he had to influence someone from a legal profession who also played basketball. Tim figured out how to get invited and play on his team.

Influencing people

These are the moments when your startup is dead, and all seems lost. As a radio company, Pandora operated under a statutory license that let them play all the music without directly licensing the content. But in 2007, the Copyright Royalty Board made a ruling that made the royalty rates so high that it almost put them out of business. Pandora then emailed their listeners and asked them to contact their members of Congress. Two million people called, wrote, or visited their members of Congress to protest. Congress finally intervened and got the rates to a more normal place.

“We’re f*cked, it’s over” (WFIO) moments

The most common question among startup founders is how to know when is it time to quit. They really want some validation for their decision. A better mindset is to say, "This is my life. I'm not doing it because I'm guaranteed a reward at the end. I'm doing it because that's what I do." It's better to do and fail than regret not trying at all.

How to get out of an entrepreneurial rut

Tim Westergren discusses his company’s humble beginnings and what it takes to sell your vision.

Tim Westergren maxed out 11 credit cards, racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and was rejected 348 times for a second round of funding for his revolutionary idea for a music streaming platform. But like any true artist, Westergren remained committed to his vision of creating an aesthetically more beautiful future with Pandora, and now the company boasts more than 6 million monthly subscribers. Mike Maples, Jr of FLOODGATE interviews Westergren to discuss the company’s humble beginnings, why it took an act of Congress to keep the company alive, and why both men believe the best founders are artists who can sell their vision.

podcasts

Podcasts

Host Mike Maples Jr from venture capital firm FLOODGATE offers lessons from the startup super performers—BEFORE they were successful—featuring interviews with some of Silicon Valley’s most legendary entrepreneurs and thought leaders, including Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Nextdoor co-founder Sarah Leary, Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Kreiger, and more.

Starting Greatness

Tim Westergren: How The Band Kept Playing At Pandora

Dating and starting a business aren't that different. The most important thing in both is making authentic connections. Whether you are looking to close a date or a sale, here are five tips from my love guru mom that can help your business grow into something long-lasting.

Dating Vs Starting a Business 

The statistics on co-founder relationships aren't great. Almost half end within four years. Narrowing down the right partnership was mostly about asking the right questions. When making reference calls for potential co-founders,  skip the former co-workers and talk to their brothers and sisters instead. The success of our business would not depend on great coding skills, but on who the person was at their core.

Dating Your Co-Founder

The best conversations in dating weren't factual (conveying information), but emotional (conveying authenticity).As in relationships, vulnerability was critical. Get real with investors about the struggles of raising funds via Zoom during a pandemic. Instead of talking about accomplishments, share failures.

Dating Investors

When you log on to Zoom, most people are not thinking about settings or how buttons feel where they are. They're thinking about meeting someone new, making a good impression, and building relationships. Some of the best product designers don't design nitty-gritty elements. Instead, they talk about the emotional journey of a user. Great dates don't talk about their hobbies or where they went to college. Instead, they make the other person feel seen. That might mean expressing curiosity in someone's experience growing up in a small town, or gratitude that they chose a restaurant close to you.

Dating Your Product

As you are brainstorming product features, try to focus on how the end-user will feel navigating it and let that be your guide. All of our new features start with a user journey for how we intend to make someone feel. The result is a stronger user experience.

Better User Experience

Just like any budding romance, you want to put your best foot forward by coming prepared. How do you do that efficiently when you're scheduled in back-to-back sales meetings? For a romantic introduction, a matchmaker might hand you a quick summary before your first date. Getting the facts early gives you time to think about who they are and what they might resonate with.

Dating Your Sales Prospect

Why do most people go on first dates? Not to impress someone the most they've ever been impressed, take them to the fanciest dinner, or land the first kiss. Ideally, it's to lay the foundation for a mutually beneficial relationship.The most important thing about "dating for business" is that laying the foundation for a long-term relationship always wins out.  You never know if the person you're meeting will become your next co-founder, hire, or your best friend's future partner. And just like in dating, if you focus on building a relationship, then everything else will be far more fruitful.

People First

The most important thing in both is making authentic connections

loveandrelationships

Love & Relationships

product

Product & Design

What  Do Dating and Starting A Business Have in Common? Ask A Professional Matchmaker

Always start with a naming brief — even if it’s an informal one — that defines the strategy behind the company, product, or service being named. Make sure to include a description of what’s being named, ideas you’re hoping to convey via the name, a description of your target audience, and the names of your competitors. This will help guide you as you consider your various options.Bringing strategy into the naming process ensures your name will send the right signals to the right people, align with brand and business strategy, and take the cultural and competitive backdrop into account.

Be Strategic

<ul><li>Is your name meaningful? Does it convey the intended message and evoke the right feelings? Tesla is a name that does a great job of suggesting electricity and technical prowess.</li><li>Is it adaptable? Is it able to stretch to accommodate foreseeable changes in the brand? Pizza Hut and RadioShack have trouble explaining that they sell more than pizza and radios, respectively. </li><li> Is it distinctive? Will it stand out when compared with your competitors? When Apple was named, other computer companies included Commodore, Microsoft, and IBM. The simplicity of Apple stands out in that crowd.</li></ul>

Mindset

Marc Andreessen: How to hire the best people you’ve ever worked with

5 ways to build an Alzheimer’s-resistant brain | Lisa Genova

The Language Instinct

Why We Can’t Remember Our Youngest Years

Denise Fox