Mindset alchemy: Why synthesizing entrepreneurship and creativity is key to change-making

“Only when we reach people's hearts can we bring about a paradigm shift.” So said Kumi Naidoo, former head of Greenpeace and Amnesty International, at the Creative Pioneer Gathering in Milan, Italy, last year.

This observation points to a central challenge for change-makers: bringing about sustainable change requires not only the ability to build systems and scale solutions, but also the capacity to connect with people, a sense of purpose and imagination.

Change increasingly unfolds within the context of complex social, economic and cultural systems. The Synthesizing Entrepreneurship and Creativity: The Role of a Hybrid Mindset in Change-making study examines how different approaches to shaping change can complement one another, rather than being viewed as competing models.

It is based on 15 qualitative interviews with global change-makers and identifies two archetypes: the social entrepreneur and the creative pioneer.

Supported by Adecco Group's Innovation Foundation and the Moleskine Foundation, the study examines the mindsets that help the change-maker archetypes to drive positive change. The results suggest that, while each approach has its strengths, focusing exclusively on logic can leave significant potential untapped.

The first archetype identified is social entrepreneurs, who believe in scale, structure and impact, and translate their mission into structural engines for impact. They build sophisticated socio-economic ecosystems – partnerships, metrics, fundraising – and are driven to scale their innovations sustainably, developing measurable, systemic interventions.

Creative pioneers inspire meaning, resonance and hope and rarely start with spreadsheets and strategic plans. They are driven by a thirst for justice and imagine a better future from a place of passion. Their work becomes a cultural celebration, full of confidence and creative symbolism, orienting people and nurturing belonging.

The interviews suggest that long‑term impact depends less on choosing one logic and more on navigating between them. These mindsets root in what we call ‘mojo’.

The interviewees described the need for a sustained inner energy to advance a vision and inspire others: mojo. While there are many related concepts in psychology and management literature, mojo has novel dimensions as it is closing linked to the following concepts:

Unlike self-efficacy, mojo translates beliefs into experienced energy and unlike intrinsic motivation, it integrates autonomy, competence and meaning into a lived state of energized engagement.

Unlike flow, mojo is not episodic and unlike resilience, it is not merely reactive. Mojo acts as an integrative meta‑capability that aligns cognition, emotion and action.

The interviews showed three dynamic mindset dimensions, spaces for contextual decision-making and reflection:

Creative pioneers emphasize deep community connections, trust and local impact. For them, growth is optional and should happen only when people and ecosystems naturally support it. By contrast, many social entrepreneurs prioritize scalable solutions that expand impact through experimentation, standardization and replication. Both approaches are valuable, and leaders benefit from navigating between them consciously.

After more than 25 years in global development, Marta Foresti founded LAGO, a research and creative collective on migration, culture and the arts. She values local depth over expansion: “If I turn it into a multi-day festival, it's too much. It doesn't feel right. I don't want to be responsible for more than five people.”

On the other end of the spectrum, Rachel Shahar, Founder of InnoHub and Co-founder of MakeHerFuture, sees innovation as a way to amplify social impact through scale: “I think about scale, when I think about more impact, more people that are influenced.”

This dimension explores different beliefs about leadership. Some leaders emphasize personal agency, responsibility and accountability, while others focus on empowering collective leadership and building a shared vision through collaboration. Both approaches are essential, and effective leaders move between them as needed.

After more than 20 years in international business, Andrea Monti left his corporate career at Hewlett-Packard to found EHL Next, seeking greater alignment between his values and work. Reflecting on the transition, he says: “Finally, I was able to realign myself.”

On the relational side, Kikelomo Oludemi – DJ, presenter, curator, Boiler Room host and co-founder of Oroko Radio – believes meaningful change is created collectively: “A project is only successful if everyone involved is committed to the vision.”

This dimension captures the balance between stewardship – protecting a venture’s purpose, people and context – and the wild, which embraces experimentation, disruption and uncertainty. Effective changemakers know when to safeguard what exists and when to challenge it in pursuit of greater impact.

Adria Goodson, Director at the Ford Foundation, champions stewardship by creating space for others to contribute and thrive: “Primary contribution is to hold what everybody brings into the room. And not to hold it and keep it, but to be someone who can help support the flow.”

Representing the wild, Anis Barnat, founder of El Sistema Greece, embraces experimentation and learning through action: “You don't really have the time to understand what you're doing and how you're doing it.”

These mindset dimensions enable social entrepreneurs and creative pioneers to consciously deal with paradoxes and transform tensions into ‘mindset alchemy’ for change-making.

Social entrepreneurs sometimes risk becoming detached from their creative source of inspiration, while creative pioneers may struggle to adapt to systemic structures.

Mojo enables both change-makers to move between these poles without losing coherence or burning out.

To enable a shared understanding that connects metrics and meaning, we believe that a new language for change-making could promote narratives such as:

In practice, this points toward a hybrid approach to change: combining clear orientation and accountability with the inner energy that enables strategies to evolve as reality changes.

When social entrepreneurs, creative pioneers, funders, educators and policy-makers embrace the hybrid nature of entrepreneurship and creativity, we can achieve healthy protagonists and greater impact.

For instance, the contrast between Marta Foresti’s emphasis on local depth and Rachel Shahar’s focus on scaling illustrates how different approaches can address the same fundamental goal – greater societal impact – in very different ways.

Similarly, examples concerning agency and relationality, as well as stewardship and the wild, demonstrate that effective work for change often requires knowing when to lead directly, when to create space for others, when to preserve what is important, and when to experiment.

For this, change-makers need not lose focus but refine and deepen their awareness. By embracing both sides and moving fluidly between mindsets, each archetype can forge their own path: not a place of compromise, but of mindset alchemy.