Mindset Trek was recognized with honorable mentions in the International Elearning Association (IELA) 2021 Awards, in both the academic and corporate divisions.

Mindset Trek is a featured case study in the International Journal of Advanced Corporate Learning (iJAC).

Research-Based Innovativeness eLearning

Mindset Trek is a personalized training program designed to strengthen your innovativeness, to enhance your success and the value you create.

Free Your Genius

You were born innovative. We all were. But most of us tend to interfere with that capability. We’ve been conditioned—and conditioned ourselves—to think and behave in ways that undermine our innate brilliance. Innovator Mindset guides you back to a mindset that is more agile, flexible and adaptive. A mindset that unleashes your capacity to learn, gain insights and discover new ways to understand the world and the challenges you face.

Master Your Mindset

Your mindset is the “you” you’ve created—mostly subconsciously. It’s your personal autopilot. A vast collection of frequently hidden assumptions and beliefs. It’s largely invisible to you, yet it rules your life, determining how you experience and respond to what happens around you. Innovator Mindset helps you surface those hidden assumptions, evaluate them, and shift to a mindset that enhances your creativity, resourcefulness and effectiveness—your innovativeness. Take charge of your mindset, instead of letting your mindset control you.

Strengthen Your Mental Agility

It’s been called learning agility or a learner mindset. Related terms include a growth mindset, a scout mindset, and an entrepreneurial mindset. Whatever name you choose, it’s a fundamental capability we all need, to successfully navigate this fast-changing world. It’s the ability to figure out, and refigure out, what’s happening around you, so you can effectively handle the evolving challenges you face. It includes being creative, learning new things, overcoming setbacks, and finding solutions. It’s that capability that Innovator Mindset measures and develops.

Turbocharge Your Team

Imagine getting your team members all thinking creatively, learning quickly, gaining insights, and discovering new possibilities. Innovator Mindset fosters those results. It can be used as a diagnostic screening tool to help identify the most promising new hires, or to populate a team. But it’s highest best use is developmental. Identifying your folks’ strengths and gaps. Then, helping them close those gaps and build on those strengths, to become world class learners, problem solvers and innovators.

Innovation teams will find that Innovator Mindset enhances their ability to effectively apply any innovation process.

“… a great route to understanding the thinking processes that lead to innovation and change, as well as the process that stalls people into stagnant spirals.”

Art Fry, 3M, Inventor of Post-It Notes

“I absolutely love the Mindset Trek course! Innovator Mindset is a well-researched, reliable and impactful instrument that reveals what makes the difference between a successful and a less successful entrepreneur and innovator.”

Dr. Bettina vonStamm, Innovation Philosopher & Founder of the Innovation Leadership Forum

“Interesting and well worth your time.”

Felicia Webster, Hewlett Packard

Frequently Asked Questions

An Innovator Mindset is a combination of personal capabilities that predispose you to being innovative and adaptive. Those tendencies include a willingness to use your imagination, take thoughtful risks, make astute observations, and be open to new ways of making sense of what you experience. It’s the capacity to generate promising ideas, apply and explore those ideas, gather feedback, and discover new insights. An Innovator Mindset is often found in those who are actively engaged in innovation. But anyone can apply these same capabilities to become more personally effective in any context, facing any challenge.

Developing an Innovator Mindset is advantageous for anyone who needs to effectively manage change, adapt in a dynamic environment, and navigate life’s challenges. It’s particularly valuable for those whose professional responsibilities require innovation competencies. That includes entrepreneurs, new product developers, R&D professionals, strategic leaders, project managers, engineers and inventors.

Innovator Mindset is backed by strong research findings. That includes an innovativeness study of hundreds of entrepreneurs done in cooperation with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, and work helping develop innovativeness in college students under a grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation. Go to Innovator Mindset Research, for downloadable peer reviewed research articles published in series in the International Journal of Innovation Science, as well as a white paper and technical report.

Among the most compelling research done on Innovator Mindset is a study of its impact on the value created by startup founders. Those who scored highest on a personal Innovativeness Index were dramatically more successful. Their ventures averaged 34x profits, 70x revenues and 10x jobs created. They were much more likely to be the kind of home run ventures that investors are seeking, and significantly less likely to fail trying. The impact of an Innovator Mindset on startup success is greater than any other personal variable that’s been researched.

There are many ways to innovate. It happens in nature, our technologies and the sciences. It may be fostered by such innovation tools as design thinking, creative problem solving and lean startup, among others. But all types of innovation follow the same fundamental pattern or Innovation Cycle. Innovator Mindset is based on that cycle, so it’s compatible with—and enhances—any widely used innovation process.

Innovator Mindset is unique in two ways. 1) It’s a rigorously validated instrument that provides detailed personalized feedback on your mindset and what shifts you can make to improve it, and 2) It provides comprehensive online instruction in developing your personal innovativeness through Mindset Trek elearning.

Mindset Trek is a self-paced elearning program for boosting your innovativeness and effectiveness. It consists of more than 20 video modules, plus exercises and activities. Mindset Trek includes taking and retaking the Innovator Mindset assessment to measure and gauge your progress. For a full rundown of what this training includes, see the COURSE SUMMARY.

Simply put: They can’t handle it.

We have yet to find an elearning platform sophisticated enough to host the Innovator Mindset assessment, online dashboard, and interactive functionality Mindset Trek provides. So we built our own.

Yes. At THIS LINK, you’ll be able to complete the first three trails. At that point, you’ll be prompted to purchase Mindset Trek. That will enable you to take the Innovator Mindset assessment and continue your elearning journey.

Yes. Upon completion of Mindset Trek, within 90 days of your purchase, if you don’t feel it’s worth the investment, CONTACT US and we’ll refund your payment.

Individuals may seek a full refund from Innovator Mindset, upon completion of Mindset Trek, within 90 days of purchase, if they do not find it worth the investment. These terms apply to individual non-student purchases. Discounted academic purchases and other group purchases are not refundable but may be transferrable.

What to Expect

Mindset Trek Course Summary

Mindset Trek elearning is designed to help you develop your mindset in ways that will enhance your performance as an entrepreneur or other innovator, as well as adapt to challenges in any setting. It does that by helping you recognize choices you may not realize you have and providing feedback on what shifts you can make to optimize your mindset and strengthen your innovativeness.

Each trail begins with a short video followed by a brief exercise or quiz to help you measure your understanding of the material covered. You will also be urged to capture your questions, ideas and insights, and reflect on the content. You’re free to follow Mindset Trek at your own pace, or as directed by your instructor, coach or mentor. The length of each trail varies, but they typically take 15 – 20 minutes to complete. Trail 10 includes four Paths that will each take you about that long. The total time commitment to complete all the Mindset Trek content is 3 – 4 hours.

Trail 1 lets you choose to take this journey as an entrepreneur, or as an innovation generalist. The core content is the same, but the application may be different, so two different introductions are provided.

Trails 1-3 in your Mindset Trek explain what this journey will look like and how it will benefit you–based on rigorous peer-reviewed research. After completing Trail 3, you will be prompted to take the Innovator Mindset assessment. This takes about 15 minutes to complete online. Once you’ve finished the assessment, you’ll resume your journey.

Trails 4-7 explain what an Innovator Mindset is and introduce key concepts you need to understand to interpret your IM assessment results.

In Trail 8 you’ll gain access to a personal dashboard that provides detailed feedback based on your Innovator Mindset assessment. You can go back to your IM dashboard to review your results at any time.

Trail 9 introduces you to a series of Paths. You can choose where to start, depending on where you are as an innovator and the challenges you’re pursuing.

Trail 10 gives you guidance for each of those four Paths. In each Path, you will learn how to navigate that Phase of the Innovation Cycle. You’ll also learn the Habits of an Innovator for that Phase. You’ll be prompted to return to your Innovator Mindset dashboard to get personalized feedback within that Phase, and you’re urged to begin practicing these habits.

Trail 11 explains how to navigate the Innovation Cycle as a whole, while keeping things in balance, and directs you back to your IM dashboard for personalized feedback on how well you may be doing that.

Trail 12 completes your journey by giving you an opportunity to retake the Innovator Mindset assessment. Your results will be immediately available in your dashboard, so you can compare them to your previous scores to gauge your progress in developing an Innovator Mindset.

“I’m extremely thankful for the Innovator Mindset class. Its easy to understand frameworks taught me how to think of new innovative solutions to problems. It’s proven extremely applicable in my internship at Adobe.”

Olusola Babatunde, Texas A&M University
“Great exercises, feedback, empowering context-training.”
TinaMarie Tidrick, Office of Enterprise Technology, Northern Ireland

“An intriguing concept and one that I’ll begin to use right now.”

Lee Glenn, Maytag

“A fun way to learn to be more innovative.”

Nitin Gupta, Wells Fargo