INSIDE CULTURE OF SUCCESS LED BY INNOVATION AND GROWTH MINDSET.

Bangkok 14 January 2019 – Nowadays technology, people, and businesses in the world are changing rapidly, the quicker organizations adjust and keep their dynamism, the better they will successfully survive through this transformation period. “People” become the key to drive organizational agility and competitiveness in the digital era. Organizations not only need capable people, but also those who make the best use of opportunities and never stop learning and developing continuously.

True Digital Park, the Global Destination for digital life, hosted the Time for Thailand Talk Series #6 on “Inside a Culture of Success Led by an Innovation and Growth Mindset.” This session featured the importance of a growth mindset as a key characteristic that drives organizations forward, ensuring they become more agile and ready for any challenges the future will bring. Mr. Shujaat Alikhan, Industry Manager at Google, shared his insights on how to drive growth mindset in an organization to achieve continued growth and development.

Mr. Shujaat mentioned that three years ago, Google split up into smaller companies to more effectively and widely cultivate a growth mindset culture in organization. This approach can positively drive change together with transparency and is also measurable with KPIs.

Organizations that have just started to develop a growth mindset need to have a team with a humble attitude. They should be open mind about what they are capable of and more eager to learn and develop. These positive attitude help drive organizations’ growth. However, this isn’t as easy as it sounds. But it’s important because by being humble, staff will start to ask how to make the world better, and how we can help people to do things better. Tackling these kinds of questions leads to the development of products and services that help to improve quality of life.

Accepting failure is another important thing for organization with Growth Mindset. They need to think in advance about what would they do if a project fails. The organizations should make its workforce feel that failure is acceptable, but they must learn to improve and move on quickly, as opportunities never wait.

In addition to having a growth mindset, what drives Google to continue improving its organization is that consumers are changing. This, at the same time, provides a lot of opportunities for Google. Thai consumers need more than traditional Internet services, and this drives Google to fulfil their needs accordingly. “When consumers change, there are specific services customized to suit these specialized needs in the Thai market such as Google Maps for motorcycles and scooters and free Internet service in major or popular areas. These are examples of development driven by a growth mindset. We need to grow with the market and stay relevant for a long period. Nevertheless, Google does not focus on competition first. It is more important that users have a positive experience, then other things will follow.”

Mr. Shujaat also discussed how a growth mindset applies to the way people work at Google. They will ask themselves questions on everything like – “Do we know the customers well?” and “Do we offer a suitable solution for them?” – while also caring about the little things that help to improve the user’s experience. For example, they utilize machine learning to learn more about customer information and feedback, then develop the service to meet their demands, or take a basic service which was then further developed such as Google Translate, which is improved from Google Search, or Google Photos, which is great for both photo storage and search engine, and so forth.

Google also continues to develop its human resources by offering many human development projects to employees who think they are lacking in some areas and need further development. Google executives are evaluated as well. This approach provides feedback and shared information and helps everyone to work better as a team with disclosed objectives and outcomes that enhance trust and transparency in the organization.

“The important things are the commitment and the will to go beyond boundaries. These leads to the innovation of products and services to help solve problems or provide solutions that meet consumer demands. According to Larry Page, Google’s founder and CEO of Alphabet, we should focus on making a product 10x times better, not improving it by 10%,” concluded Mr. Shujaat.

Time for Thailand #6 is an event hosted by True Digital Park, Thailand's first and Southeast Asia’s largest digital hub, in order to build a startup network, in the belief that learning is never-ending for startups. Follow up on the activities and seminars for startup networks at: www.facebook.com/TrueDigitalPark