The Role of Failure in Driving Innovation

Tags: Anecdotal, CrowdWeaving®, Innovation

I’ve been asked to write this month’s blog for KL Communications.  Typically, I have no problem finding things to say – just ask my co-workers who get to listen to me every day – but for some reason, when I sat down to write this blog, I couldn’t think of anything interesting to write.

So…. I turned on my laptop and headed to Google for inspiration.  I looked up the latest research “buzz” words to get the juices flowing.   Nothing struck my fancy.   Do I want to write about online focus groups?   Been there, done that.    How about crowdsourcing?    Now while that’s a hot topic these days, and one that to be honest is close to my heart – especially CrowdWeaving® – what do I want to say?   Writer’s block has reared its ugly head big time!

After a few more attempts to find an interesting topic to write about, I realized that I’m failing miserably with this blog.   Nothing is inspiring me to put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard these days).

But wait… this idea of failing miserably actually is striking a chord.   Can this be the inspiration I needed?

I have recently read excerpts from the book called Innovate or Die: A Personal Perspective on the Art of Innovation.  In this book, author Jack Matson, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Environmental Engineering at Penn State, coins the phrase “Intelligent Fast Failure.”

Dr. Matson’s philosophy is to stimulate creativity by encouraging his students to risk failure, because that failure is essential to innovation. The goal with Intelligent Fast Failure is to move as quickly as possible from new ideas to new knowledge by making small and manageable mistakes — intelligent failures. By moving quickly, we can determine what works, and what doesn’t, without losing time, money and energy devoted to developing an idea. These days, things are constantly changing, and people are always coming up with new ways to do things. Not every change can be successful – some will fail. The key is to keep learning from these failures and try to avoid letting your intelligent failures negatively influence your emotions and self-esteem. And by all means, fail falling forward.

As an example of how Intelligent Fast Failure stimulates innovation, Dr. Matson describes how a bird builds a nest.  The bird “collects twigs and places them on a small ledge. The wind blows some of the twigs away. The bird sees this and brings in larger twigs. A rainstorm washes some twigs away. The bird replaces those with heavier twigs. Eventually the nest is built. For the bird, each failure provides a partial truth. When sufficient knowledge was acquired, the bird is able to build a lasting nest. Multiple failures contained the partial truths with which the bird is able to achieve its goal.”

Suddenly, I had an “A-Ha Moment!”  By trying multiple times, and failing multiple times, to come up with a blog post idea, I was eventually able to come up with my topic through Intelligent Fast Failure.  Even more importantly – since, as I mentioned earlier, CrowdWeaving® is close to my heart, and a big part KLC – when I realized that my blog would be about IFF, it hit me how important this concept is to our co-creation process.

With CrowdWeaving®, consumers are put in the driver’s seat.  They are given the opportunity to share their ideas or solutions for new products and services with the brands they love the most, to create something for which they have a true need and desire.  But we don’t just ask consumers to create ideas.  We also ask them to collaborate with each other to refine their ideas, and work together to make good ideas great.  So really, we’re employing this Intelligent Fast Failure method in all of our CrowdWeaving® studies.    Consumers come up with ideas that they can then hone based on feedback they receive from others, or elements of other ideas that can complement theirs.    By taking the chance and posting an idea, then allowing for it to be reviewed, and possibly criticized, by co-collaborators, they are constantly taking steps toward creating a final, robust idea that can take a trusted brand to the next level.   The revisions, or “failures” if you will, all provide partial truths that help to create the final winning idea.   Therefore, failure is a key component of CrowdWeaving®, as it’s also a key component of innovation.   You can’t innovate if you aren’t willing to take a chance, and sometimes fail.   After all, the greatest success often comes after much trial and error.

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