Incremental mindset means taking an idea and improving it in small iterative steps. Great things are build by people who keep their focus on an idea for a longer period of time then an average person, and kept improving it. It’s a believe that says, I may not know everything right now, but I will learn it along the way. To start building things and keep improving them till they become perfect.
You can read article in Stanford magazine or the Mindset book by Carol Dweck around Growth Mindset, to understand the research around incremental mindset and how to develop it, within yourself.
When you are running a startup, this believe in yourself, that you will figure things out along the way, will keep you from giving up when things become tough and everything is going against you. I have now faced such situations twice at AmiWorks, first in 2011, and then again in 2014. I continued simply because I believe in identifying and correcting mistakes and moving forward.
For me, the best examples of growth mindset comes from the life stories of Michael Faraday and Thomas Edison, they kept experimenting on their ideas till they found a way to make them reality.
picture credit : by Standford Magazine