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This chapter explores the role of individual cognitive abilities in the radical innovation of business models and their value proposition. The focus on a specific cognitive construct – metacognition – contributes to understanding the specificities of “criticism,” an approach relevant to addressing the challenges of the radical innovation of value drivers. Based on empirical data, this exploratory research identifies the characteristic elements of criticism from a metacognition perspective, pinpointing the key moments and attitudes of innovators, i.e., cognition of own cognition. The analysis of the findings shows that successful innovators are able to leverage the perception and control of own cognition to more effectively develop and negotiate the radical innovation of the business model in their organization, going beyond the dichotomy between rational and affective mental states. This chapter concludes with a discussion and future research outlook.

This study aims at the employees’ view on organizational learning (OL). OL is originally assessed in the Strategic Learning Assessment Map (SLAM) at the level of the firm by addressing managers, who rated OL in the SLAM on five dimensions of individual, group, organizational, feed-forward and feedback learning. However, as employees are getting their jobs done discretely and are increasingly making their own decisions, their perspective on OL genuinely matters. Hence, the authors assessed OL at the level of the individual by addressing employees on all levels, who rated OL in a short form of the SLAM (SF-SLAM).

In this paper, the authors focused on the construct validity of this SF-SLAM by investigating its reliability, factorial validity and nomological network. First, they asked whether the SF-SLAM reliably measures OL on five dimensions of individual, group, organizational, feed-forward and feedback learning. Next, they asked whether the SF-SLAM was associated with its nomological network of engaging in innovation-related learning activities, behaving innovatively on the job and showing higher educational levels, intelligence and individual job performances. They used a diverse German employee sample of skilled and unskilled workers and managers (N = 434) and analyzed the data with structural equation modeling.

The SF-SLAM was reliable, but revealed both constrained factorial validity and validity on the basis of its nomological network. First, five dimensions found support in the employee sample, but their correlations were high or very high, except for individual learning. Second, the SF-SLAM showed only few differential relations with variables from its nomological network.

Taken together, the SF-SLAM is short, reliable and only valid for examining individual learning.