Page - 6 - in Digital Entrepreneurship - Impact on Business and Society

The concept of a mindset comes from the fields of cognitive psychology and organisation theory. According to cognitive psychology literature, a mindset rep- resents the cognitive processes activated in response to a given task (French2016). As such, amindset represents the sumof one’s knowledge, including one’s beliefs about theworld. Throughourmindsets,we determine howwe receive and react to information. Thus, a mindset is a filter for informationwe obtain. In organisation theory literature, a mindset is quite often discussed in tandemwith organisational change,which isanongoingprocess inbusinesses. In linewithGleeson(2019),one of the most critical drivers of organisational change is the mindset of change. Through its effects on behaviour, a mindset also creates the culture of an organisation. Overall, themindset of an entrepreneur is a product of histories, and it evolves through an interactive process. An individual’s current mindset guides them in collecting and interpreting new information. If the new information is consistent with the current mindset, it reinforces that mindset. From time to time, however, newdata appears that isgenuinelynovel and inconsistentwith theexistingmindset. When thishappens, entrepreneurs either reject the latest informationor change their mindset.The likelihood that an entrepreneur’smindsetwill changedepends largely on how explicitly self-conscious they are of their current mindsets; when an indi- vidual’s cognitivefilters aremore hidden and subconscious, they are less likely to adapt their mindset. People’smindsets are commonlycategorised into twomajor types, namelyfixed and growth. The mindset refers to the assumptions, notions and methods of a person.While afixedmindset assumes that talents and abilities are set, the growth mindsetbelieves that skills andabilities canbedeveloped.Forexample, individuals with afixedmindset believe that their intelligence is a static trait that can only be present rather than developed further. Meanwhile, people with a growth mindset believe they could change through hardwork.Nevertheless, it is essential to point out that a mindset can change (Dweck and Yeager 2019). This typically occurs when an individual develops a greater awareness of their currentmindset and takes steps to purposefully start thinking and reacting in new ways. Changing your mindset towards a growthmindset is crucial as it leads to better relationships and interactionswithothersandhappiness (VanTongerenandBurnette2018).Theshift to adigital business landscape also requires changes in the entrepreneurialmindset. One such example would be if a manufacturing company moves away from the traditional linear model of supply, manufacture and distribution towards a net- worked and connectedmodel inwhich all data is stored in clouds and is accessible to theentirevaluechainat all times. In this scenario, it is notonlyentrepreneursbut also individual employees who are enabled to observe and influence the whole supply chain process in real time. Such opportunities redefine the decision-making processes of entrepreneurs andmaking sense of the high volume of available data thathasgrownexponentiallyacross supplychain.Thus, it isvital that entrepreneurs also embrace a growth mindset and embrace the possibility of changing their approach. 6 M. Soltanifar and E. Smailhodžić