Sustaining Innovation Starts with Self-Efficacies

The authors of this article explored the role that four different workforce factors—digital literacy, entrepreneurial orientation, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, and digital technology self-efficacy—play in digital innovation. They found that a basic understanding of digital technologies is not associated with innovativeness with digital technologies. They also found that the intention to become an entrepreneur does not relate to a higher degree of digital innovativeness. Both entrepreneurial self-efficacy and digital technology self-efficacy were significantly and strongly linked to a greater level of digital innovation, which suggests that self-efficacies can be a major part of academic and workforce training (or retraining) programs. Building on their research, the authors identified four principles that educational institutions and companies can follow to design academic and training programs that prepare digital innovators: 1) experimenting with digital technologies, not just understanding them, promotes digital technology self-efficacy; 2) seek to grow entrepreneurial self-efficacy; 3) rely on experiential learning frameworks; and 4) follow management methodologies that support experimentation, reflection, and iteration.