Benefiting from Failure

This smart failure keynote by Rita McGrath offers insights on how to safely implement failure into the workplace to inspire innovation. Innovation can be risky, since it is usually an unexplored aspect. McGrath describes this as discovery driven growth, which is implemented when a company is operating on assumptions because there is no history to learn from. The process operates on the notion of planning to learn instead of planning to be right.

The key to this initiative is to make sure it is on the top of the workplace agenda. When employees know you are taking it seriously, it becomes part of the culture. McGrath also states that failure needs to be something that is tolerated. With every new venture, the mindset that you are essentially paying for the research needs to be held. At the same time, a company needs to have intelligent failures that are protected and have the downsides contained.