Thomas Alva Edison was a failure. It has been said that he “went back to the drawing board” more than 6,000 times before finding the right plant to produce a carbonized filament for his incandescent light bulb.
Six thousand times. Do you have that kind of innovative stamina?
It’s been said that Risk + Experimentation (+ Failure) = Improved Environment for Innovation. Put another way, Innovation = Creativity x Risk Taking.
Innovation is an experiment of sorts. It requires a culture of risk, opportunity and challenge. Moreover, for an organization to benefit from innovation, leaders and team members alike must welcome – and grow from – failure.
Rather than view failure as inherently bad, successful innovation requires that executives and teams commit to learning from each experiment gone bad — and incorporate those teachings into the next endeavor.
The successes and failures borne of innovation experimentation perpetuate innovation. When strategies are emerging, innovators test their hypotheses and gather information to continue forward with their ideas. Whether the innovation is a consumer product, a software application, or an internal process for an existing business enterprise or workflow strategy, the question remains: How will the idea resonate with the target audience or user? What costs are reasonable? Can the audience (consumers, manufacturers, employees) be convinced to shift well-established habits to embrace The New?
Because of a high failure rate, organizations pursuing the practice of Innovation must have a tolerance for failure. Not every idea will win. But each failure must be perceived as valuable in the trial-and-error process as a team seeks improvement. Tolerance for failure must be encouraged, as well as enthusiasm for risk-taking. Without risk, there can be no reward.
To create a culture of innovation, organizations should:
- Encourage well-reasoned risk-taking. The pursuit of innovation isn’t some fool-hardy flight of fancy. Encourage — or insist upon — a plan to be presented first, to ensure understanding and buy-in across the affected organization. Know your tolerance for risk and failure in the pursuit of innovation.
- Test. True innovation requires thorough testing in pursuit of success. Testing, measurement, and an accounting of what’s been learned — even in failure — brings measurable outcomes from successes and failures alike.
- Trust. Do you – as a CEO or team leader – trust your people to pursue new ideas on behalf of the company? Build a culture of trust in the individual’s pursuits — so long as safety-measures are in place to safe guard against failure damaging the organization.
Most of all, avoid letting a failed concept kill your team’s motivation. Every idea should be given positive acknowledgment, every failure should be studied for “what went wrong,” and every success should receive appropriate reward. By providing your team with a culture of Innovation, their risk-taking abilities will improve. And, as was the case with Mr. Edison, they eventually will see the light borne from their successful innovations.
Tags: experimentation, failure, high failure rate, innovation, innovation coach, risk, robert's rules of innovation
Great blog Robert! I sent it on to two of my fellow Corporate Scientists from 3M and one of them is Art Fry the Post It Note inventor!
Creative regards,
Kim
Posted by Kimberly Johnson
The response from Retired 3M Corporate Scientist, Dave Braun:
Hi Kim and Art…………Hello from sunny AZ where we have been hitting 100F for the last few days.
Kim, thanks for the quote. It is good for most people since the risk part encourages experiments with unpredictable outcomes. Realize that many people won’t do that kind of thing due to fear of “failure”.
The (+ Failure) part is OK for many people who think that if their desired outcome is not met they “failed”. But something always happens when one experiments so I have always looked at the “failed result” as learning something new which at times is more useful than the hoped for outcome.
Dave
Wonderful Blog. It’s uplifting. I need to post this in my lab to read on a daily basis!
Linda Jakubus, Owner Jaku Bodycare Inc
Failure is too often equated with waste (time, people, other resources), opportunity cost, hard dollar cost. Trusting that failure(s) will eventually lead to innovation, which will lead to enhanced revenue/reduced costs/increased market value is a huge leap of faith for most companies. Even with prudent testing, failures can potentially have a negative impact on customers or partners. That is a risk few businesses will take.
Playing it safe, leveraging detailed internal and external analysis, and making small incremental changes is the norm for most business cultures. The culture always wins!
Building a culture of continuous learning, experimentation, risk taking and trust is a tall order for most companies which focus primarily on minor improvements to current capabilities, short term financial gains, and risk avoidance.