Innovating Series Episode 6

According to “The Innovator’s DNA”, there are five capabilities demonstrated by the best innovators: they must be able to associate and establish connections, to experiment, to meet people with different ideas, to ask questions, or to observe and examine our environment, among others.  

But it is failure, or your fear of it, that is most difficult to acquire. Failure is not an obstacle, but a fundamental pillar in the process of innovating. And accepting it is a crucial aspect of creativity.

The relationship between failure and innovation is profound and transformative.

Leaders who understand the value of mistakes as stepping stones to decisive advances can create cultures that thrive on experimentation and learning. Nor is it about celebrating failure, as some unwary people proclaim, but rather about not penalizing it, at least the well-intentioned one. Cultures in which we learn to ‘be productively wrong’.

Recognizing and accepting failure as part of the process of innovating opens doors to unexplored opportunities, pushes us towards new spaces of opportunity and, ultimately, to innovations with impact.