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The Togo mindset test

Fifteen hundred shop owners, two courses, and the one that paid for itself · 14 min

In 2014, fifteen hundred small-business owners in Lomé, Togo were split by lottery: no course, a standard business course, or a course that trained personal initiative. Two years later, one had raised profits by thirty percent and paid for itself. It never taught accounting. What it taught instead, and what the growth-mindset books get wrong.

Takeaways

  • In Lomé, Togo, in two thousand and fourteen, fifteen hundred small-business owners were split into three groups: no course, a standard business course, and a course that trained personal initiative. Over the next two years, profits rose by about thirty percent in the initiative group, against eleven percent in the standard group, a rise small enough to be chance.
  • The initiative course did not teach a belief. It drilled three behaviours: start things before anyone asks, plan for what is coming, and keep going with a plan B. Growth-mindset belief lessons on their own, tested across sixty-three school studies, moved results by almost nothing.
  • Something to try: pick one thing about your idea nobody has asked you to do, name the next three steps and a plan B, and do step one before Friday.

Chapters

  1. Two classrooms in Lomé0:17
  2. Born, not made1:53
  3. Thirty-six hours3:03
  4. Behaviour, not belief5:00
  5. Same course, different person7:40
  6. Before anyone asks9:22
  7. Seven years later11:15

References

  1. Campos, F., Frese, M., Goldstein, M., Iacovone, L., Johnson, H. C., McKenzie, D. & Mensmann, M. — Teaching Personal Initiative Beats Traditional Training in Boosting Small Business in West Africa(2017)
  2. Campos, F., Frese, M., Goldstein, M., Iacovone, L., Johnson, H. C., McKenzie, D. & Mensmann, M. (Innovations for Poverty Action copy) — Teaching personal initiative beats traditional training in boosting small business in West Africa(2017)
  3. McKenzie, D. & Goldstein, M. (World Bank, Africa Can End Poverty blog) — A better way to train small business owners: using psychology to teach personal initiative(2017)
  4. Goldstein, M. & McKenzie, D. (VoxDev) — A better way to train small business owners: Using psychology to teach personal initiative(2017)
  5. World Bank — World Bank Study: Entrepreneur Training Focused on Mindset Proves More Effective Than Traditional Business Skills in West Africa(2017)
  6. World Bank — New Mindset, Increased Profits: Lessons from an Innovative Entrepreneurial Training in Togo(2018)
  7. Innovations for Poverty Action — Thinking like an Entrepreneur: Boosting Small Business Growth with Mindset Training in Togo(2025)
  8. Campos, F., Frese, M., Iacovone, L., Johnson, H. C., McKenzie, D. & Mensmann, M. (IZA Discussion Paper 17672) — Long-Term and Lasting Impacts of Personal Initiative Training on Entrepreneurial Success(2025)
  9. McKenzie, D. (Oxford Review of Economic Policy) — Small business training to improve management practices in developing countries: re-assessing the evidence for 'training doesn't work'(2021)
  10. McKenzie, D. (World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 9408) — Small Business Training to Improve Management Practices in Developing Countries: Reassessing the Evidence for "Training Doesn't Work"(2020)
  11. Macnamara, B. N. & Burgoyne, A. P. (Psychological Bulletin) — Do Growth Mindset Interventions Impact Students' Academic Achievement? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis With Recommendations for Best Practices(2023)
  12. Macnamara, B. N. & Burgoyne, A. P. (Psychological Bulletin) — A Spotlight on Bias in the Growth Mindset Intervention Literature: A Reply to Commentaries That Contextualize the Discussion and Illustrate the Conclusion(2023)
  13. Yeager, D. S. et al. (Nature) — A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement(2019)
  14. Penguin Random House — Mindset by Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D.(2007)
  15. KQED MindShift — Carol Dweck Explains The 'False' Growth Mindset That Worries Her(2016)
  16. Alibhai, S., Buehren, N., Frese, M., Papineni, S. & Wolf, K. (World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 8892) — Full Esteem Ahead? Mindset-Oriented Business Training in Ethiopia(2019)
  17. Leuphana University, Center of Evidence-Based Entrepreneurship Development — CEED: STEP Entrepreneurship Training(2026)
  18. Gielnik, M. M., Frese, M. et al. (Academy of Management Learning & Education) — Action and Action-Regulation in Entrepreneurship: Evaluating a Student Training for Promoting Entrepreneurship(2015)