Microsoft drew on Carol Dweck's growth mindset work, which helped it move from 'know-it-alls' to 'learn-it-alls'.

Judge as of 2022-05-24. True: credible evidence (Microsoft's culture materials, Nadella's book 'Hit Refresh', or contemporaneous reporting) shows that Microsoft's culture change under Nadella explicitly drew on Carol Dweck's growth-mindset research and was framed as moving from 'know-it-alls' to 'learn-it-alls'. Mostly true: the Dweck influence and the framing are documented, but the claimed help to Microsoft is only asserted by Microsoft. Mixed: growth mindset was adopted but the link to Dweck or the know-it-all to learn-it-all framing is not documented. Mostly false: the link is only incidental. False: Microsoft did not adopt Dweck's growth-mindset framework.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 How This Book Helped Microsoft Reset Its Culture | Fortune Fortune · 24 September 2018

   “Drawing on Dweck’s concepts, “Satya had this idea of changing that culture from a know-it-all culture to a learn-it-all culture,” Johnson said.”

2. E2 Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella: It’s better to be a ‘learn-it-all’ than a ‘know-it-all’ GeekWire · 4 August 2016

   “I read a book called Mindset. In there there’s this very simple concept that Carol Dweck talks about, which is if you take two people, one of them is a learn-it-all and the other one is a know-it-all, the learn-it-all will always trump the know-it-all in the long run”

3. E3 No Learning, No Future Geoff Marlow (Substack) · 20 March 2022

   “We want to be not a “know-it-all” but “learn-it-all” organization.”

4. E4 Microsoft's Story of Culture Transformation: webinar transcript - Blue Coach | Leadership Development Blue Coach · 17 September 2020 Own record

   “Growth mindset is actually written into our description of culture. And it is something that we talk about all the time.”

Fortune (E1) quotes Microsoft's Peggy Johnson saying that, drawing on Dweck's concepts, Nadella wanted to change Microsoft from a know-it-all culture to a learn-it-all culture. GeekWire (E2) reports that Nadella tied the learn-it-all versus know-it-all idea to Dweck's book Mindset. Both reports came out well before 2022-05-24, and E4 shows that growth mindset is part of Microsoft's description of its culture. So the Dweck influence and the framing are documented by independent sources, but the claim that this helped Microsoft rests mainly on statements from Microsoft and its executives.