When Change Is Constant, Paradox Is Your Power

The New Era of Entrepreneurship: Navigating Paradox

A few years ago, change was something you managed. Now, it’s something that manages you. One of my clients, a founder of a direct-to-consumer wellness brand, recently told me, “I used to set goals, launch initiatives, optimize—now I wake up and triage existential threats before my second coffee.”

Inflation, AI, climate events, geopolitical shifts, social media storms—today’s entrepreneurs are leading in an age not of disruption, but of disintegration. The old rules are breaking down faster than new ones can be written.

In times like these, innovation isn’t your best friend. It’s your only friend. But let’s be clear: innovation today doesn’t mean just brainstorming clever products or pivoting your business model. That’s part of it. But the deeper engine of survival—and advantage—is mindset. Specifically, the ability to hold tension, navigate contradictions, and lead through paradox. The strategic edge now belongs to those with adaptive minds.

Welcome to the Paradox Era

If your business feels like it’s operating in two worlds at once—trying to scale and stay nimble, automate and stay human, specialize and stay inclusive—you’re not alone. These aren’t management problems. They’re paradoxes. And you don’t solve a paradox. You work with it.

In my book, The Art of Change, I outline seven paradoxes that every entrepreneur must master to thrive at this inflection point. I’ll explore a few here, and in the next installment, we’ll look at how to operationalize them in your company using a tool I call the Paradoxical Mindset Cycle.

Let’s begin with the first:

Paradox 1: We Seek to Change Others, but Can Only Change Ourselves

You’ve probably tried to convince a resistant partner, a difficult client, or even a spouse to see things your way. You had all the right facts. You were polite. Strategic. But nothing shifted. That’s because transformation doesn’t start with persuasion. It starts with self-awareness. You can’t change a market, team, or product until you first change the lens you’re looking through. What are you avoiding? What part of your story needs to evolve?

When founders work with us at Innovatrium, I often begin with a simple question: “What’s the story you’re telling yourself about why you’re stuck?” The answers are usually revealing—and rarely external. The real work is internal. And that’s empowering. Because once you change your approach, others often follow.

Paradox 2: We Aspire to Transcend Our Limits, but Must Do So From Within Them

Constraints can feel like enemies to creativity—especially when cash is tight, supply chains are broken, or talent is hard to find. But often, limits are the very things that force us to innovate. A startup I recently advised had to halt a promising product line due to material shortages. Instead of waiting it out, they re-engineered their offering using more sustainable, local materials—and found an entirely new customer segment in the process.

This paradox reminds us that breakthrough doesn’t come from escaping our limits. It comes from reimagining them.

Paradox 3: We Use Facts to Change Minds, but Minds Aren’t Changed by Facts

You’ve got the best data. The clearest pitch deck. But stakeholders still don’t buy in. Why? Because people don’t make decisions based on facts. They make meaning—and then use facts to justify it. If you want to lead change, you have to tell a better story.

One founder we worked with reframed his value proposition not in terms of efficiency or ROI, but in terms of identity. “This product helps your customers feel like they’re the kind of person who cares about their future.” Sales spiked.

Want to innovate? Learn to shape the narrative, not just the numbers.

Paradox 4: We Set Goals for Change, but the Goals Change With the Change

A classic entrepreneurial trap: you launch a change initiative with a clear KPI—only to realize halfway through that what you’re measuring no longer matters. This isn’t failure. It’s evolution. Think of your goals not as targets, but as tuning forks. They help you hear the resonance of what’s working—but they’ll shift as the song changes. Smart entrepreneurs adjust in real-time, not post-mortem.

At Innovatrium, we call this “strategic drift with conscious ruddering.” You’re still steering—but you’re listening to the current.

We’ve entered an era where the old maps don’t match the new terrain. Entrepreneurs are surrounded by uncertainty, and the ground keeps shifting. But for those who learn to work with paradox instead of resisting it, chaos becomes clay. You don’t just adapt—you create.

Paradox 5: We Try to Minimize Conflict, but Change Is Created by It

Most leaders treat conflict like fire: dangerous, unpredictable, something to be extinguished. But controlled well, fire gives us heat, light, transformation. Real innovation happens in the heat of creative conflict. The tension between differing viewpoints, competing values, even clashing personalities—that’s where new ideas emerge. Not when everyone agrees, but when disagreement is productive.

If your meetings are too polite, you may not have a culture of innovation. You may have a culture of avoidance. Healthy conflict, with clear norms and psychological safety, is essential for progress. It’s not an obstacle to change—it’s the crucible of it.

Paradox 6: We Attempt to Avoid Failure, but All Learning Is Developmental

In Silicon Valley, failure is practically a rite of passage. But most entrepreneurs I meet still treat it like something shameful. Something to hide. Let me put it plainly: if you’re not failing, you’re not learning. And if you’re not learning, you’re not adapting. Failure isn’t the opposite of success—it’s the compost of it. It’s how you build resilient strategies, deepen team cohesion, and surface your blind spots. Of course, not all failure is useful. But the right kind, done fast and cheap, is priceless.

So prototype. Pilot. Test. You don’t have to bet the farm. But you do have to plant something that might not grow.

Paradox 7: We Endeavor to Align the Change, but Change Is Driven by Deviance

Entrepreneurs love alignment. Clear vision. Shared values. One team, one mission. But here’s the paradox: while alignment is great for execution, it’s not great for innovation. Breakthroughs don’t come from the center. They come from the edge—from the oddball customer request, the frontline employee workaround, the unexpected insight from someone way outside the org chart.

In our work with military innovation teams, we often find that the most useful ideas come not from official strategy documents, but from the rebels. The deviants. The ones politely called “non-conforming.” That’s your innovation lab. Learn to listen there.

The Paradoxical Mindset Cycle

So how do you actually work with paradox as an entrepreneur? You don’t resolve it. You cycle through it. In The Art of Change, I introduce the Paradoxical Mindset Cycle—a simple but powerful way to turn contradictions into clarity and movement. Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Find the Paradox

Notice where something feels stuck, contradictory, or confusing in your business. These aren’t bugs—they’re signals. Are you trying to scale fast but stay small? Innovate while cutting costs? Lead boldly while staying consensus-driven? Tension isn’t a sign of failure. It’s a sign you’re on the frontier.

Step 2: Analyze the Meaning

Don’t rush to fix it. Sit with the tension. Explore both sides. Ask what’s true in each viewpoint or challenge, and why the paradox exists. What values are in play? What’s the fear behind the resistance? In this step, your job isn’t to decide. It’s to understand.

Step 3: Establish Guiding Principles

From your insight, distill a principle. Not a policy, but a compass. For example: “Speed matters more than precision in the early stage.” Or: “We welcome dissent, but commit once a decision is made.” These principles give you coherence without rigidity. They let your team act with confidence, even when conditions are murky.

Step 4: Implement Experiments

Now try something small and test it. Not a big, sweeping change—just a nudge. Pilot a new process. Try a different decision model. Launch a shadow team. The point is to learn fast, not to be right. Innovation isn’t a plan. It’s a portfolio of experiments.

The Advantage of the Adaptive Entrepreneur

Here’s the truth: the entrepreneurs who make it through this strange era won’t be the smartest or the best-funded. They’ll be the most adaptive. The ones who learn to use paradox as fuel, not friction. They’ll build companies that are small but mighty. Fragile in parts, but antifragile in whole. Creative, contradictory, and resilient.

This doesn’t mean being reactive. It means being responsive. It means working with what is, not what was. And it means building a mindset—and a business—that bends without breaking.

So go ahead: embrace the chaos. Invite the tension. Listen to the deviants. Try, fail, and adjust. The path may not be straight. But it’s real. And it’s yours to shape.