Ever thought about a typology of failure? Or that failure is actually a step to success?
There was a full panel on thinking through the role of failure in innovation including Amy Edmondson from Harvard Business School, Kris Halvorsen, Chief Innovation Officer of Intuit, Judy Estrin, Author of “Closing the Innovation Gap” and former CFO of Cisco Systems, and Peter Acworth, Founder of kink.com.
Highlights:
- Failure “stinks” but it happens and there needs to be leadership and incentive messages to encourage risking in companies and organizations.
- There is a type of failure that you learn from — it isn’t about “incompetence” it is about taking intelligent risks and being willing to fail to learn. This is successful failure.
- Innovation is about opening up new territory — moving away from the safe zone of predictability into appropriate risk which requires a specific mind-set for leaders.
- How do you reward this behaviour. Failure of the month? Failure parties?
- Don’t focus on the culture — focus on the work.
- There needs to be planning for “failure” — talking about the risks [MQ comments: enter design thinking — all about thinking through risks, testing ideas and noting consequences]
- Make sure you have looked at 7 options before you decide on 1 way forward.
The next session was on the Money Problem — the economics of innovation.
It’s all about relationships. That was the main message from this session. There was talk about involving everyone in the innovation process and the importance of a de-centralized economy. A good financial system is de-centralized and is built on on-going relationships. The US system has become too arms-length and not enough about relationships. The progressive centralization and de-personalization of finance has really caused many of our problems. No longer is the banker intimately familiar with you and your context.
Comment was that the VC (venture capital) community is built on relationships — it is quite personal, small and networked. I think I got the figures correct that there are 600,000 new business ventures in the US in a year and only 1% are VC-backed.
Its best to make small bets and have fast iteration.
Next was an interesting but hard to capture interview with Ed Catmull President of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios (Movies: Ratatouille, Wall-E, Toy Story) – the topic was What is a Creative Company? I have to admit, while I took some notes, I just sat back and enjoyed hearing Ed talk about how to work with such eccentric and creative folks! As he said, he has to have a high tolerance for eccentricity!