Characteristics

• Critical Thinker who leverages critical thinking skills to act on creative ideas
• Risk Taker
• Self Motivated
• Curious
• Intrinsically Motivated
• Open Minded
• Visionary
• Independent Thinker
• Innovative Mindset
• Entrepreneurial Mindset
• Future Ready

Practical Application

• Tips for teachers: 5 Tips to Inspire an Innovative Mindset
• Asking open-ended questions and encouraging discourse
• Project-based learning
• Genius Hour Projects- student-generated ideas for research
• Math problems with multiple solutions in which there may not be one correct answer
• Socratic seminars
• Team building activities involving risk taking and trust building
• STEM Activities- creative solutions to problem-solving
• Makerspaces
• Coding/Hour of Code/Code.org
• Modeling and encouraging risk-taking and failure as the first attempt at learning

Research

Books
The Innovator's Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity, George Couros (2015)

The Innovative Mindset: 5 Behaviors for Accelerating Breakthroughs, John Sweeney and Elena Imaretska (2015).

Articles
Couros, George. "8 Characteristics of the 'Innovator's Mindset'" (2014).

• Innovative mindset is the belief that abilities, intelligence, and talents are developed leading to the creation of new and better ideas. (Couros, 2014)

Denker, Robert. "3 Keys for Fostering an Innovative Mindset Within Your Organization."

• “Being able to generate creative or novel solutions to problems that result in improved performance.”