In Satya Nadella’s Hit Refresh, he says that “growth mindset” is how he describes Microsoft’s emerging culture, and that “it’s about every individual, every one of us having that attitude — that mindset — of being able to overcome any constraint, stand up to any challenge, making it possible for us to grow and, thereby, for the company to grow.”
Strikes me as a poorly plagiarized Toyota Kata. Toyota Kata promises your org will be maximally adaptive but it sounds like Satya wanted to one-up that with “overcome any constraints”. Toyota emphasizes iterative improvements as way a to build up systems knowledge, but Satya seems to take an essentialist read on the matter to say it’s a “mindset”, like improvement is an ingredient instead of a process.
Missing context: the USA has the largest prison population.