I follow Dan Schawbel’s blog on personal branding. Recently, he did an interview with Scott Shane, an evidence-based expert on entrepreneurship. If you are interested in entrepreneurship as I am, you need to follow Scott’s work. There are a lot of myths out there about entrepreneurship, and Scott’s scientific research sets the record straight on many of them. For example, one of the biggest predictors of success as an entrepreneur is years of experience in an industry.
In his interview with Dan, Scott says this:
People tend to discover opportunities related to what they know. When they don’t know about something, new information on the topic is lost on them and they don’t see opportunities.
I would add that if you have an expert mind – you think you know it all – you will for sure miss opportunities even in areas you are very familiar with. Try to keep a beginner’s mind – act with knowledge but admit the limits to what you know (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2000). Always be open to learning new things with respect to both content and process.
And if you model this behavior as a leader and teach your employees to do the same, you have a potetent recipe for innovation and renewal in your business.
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