What do the Jacuzzi, Champagne, Post-It notes and Viagra all have in common? They are all innovations that were failures at what they were originally designed for. They are also products that succeeded precisely because of this failure.

A recent survey identified ‘Innovation’ as the leading global strategic driver of 2005. Everyone wants to innovate. However, it has now become one of those words built into corporate values and strategies because of the need to “keep up with the Jones’s�. Few organisations understand the theory that supports innovation, and even fewer are prepared for the cost and implications of truly striving toward innovation. The reality is that innovation is always partnered with failure, but the word “failure� is never seen on the list of a corporate’s values. Kettering of GM fame called failure: “one of the greatest arts in the world�, and Thomas Watson snr of IBM maintained: “The fastest way to succeed is to double your failure rate.�

One of the problems that affect failure is the perception that failure is always a costly exercise and this is especially true if organisations don’t learn from failure. However, if structures are put in place that allow failure to be analysed, then it becomes an intangible asset that can be harnessed. There are a few things in your world that your competitors can never copy, and your failures fall into this category. Your failures are uniquely yours, so why not benefit from them?

How can failure help achieve innovation leadership?

1) See failure as an investment
Thomas Watson jnr was known as a supporter of people with unconventional ideas during his time at the helm of IBM. One of his vice presidents who had just lost $10 million on a ‘wild duck’ scheme was called to Watson’s office. Expecting the worst, the VP came with his resignation typed up and ready for submission. When he offered it to Watson it was rejected with these words: “Why would we want to lose you? We’ve just given you a $10 million education.�

2) Analyse failure and learn from it
Most people had a childhood experience where they tried something risky that failed catastrophically. Their parent’s response was: “I hope that you never try anything so stupid again!� We have brought this mindset into the corporate sector and when someone fails, we rarely stop to analyse and learn from the failure because we are in such a hurry to get away from the humiliation. It is at this moment that we truly fail, because the only true failure we can experience in innovation is that of not learning from what has gone wrong before.

3) Create safe space to share failures
3M has its legendary ‘Failure Forums’ where people who have tried and failed at something, gather to share their experiences and the problems they have faced. The Game Changer programme instituted in Royal Dutch Shell, under the oversight of Gary Hamel, is another example of this type of environment. One of the learnings that came out of this process was the realisation that many ideas came from employees who were not previously viewed as innovative or creative. The key was that the creation of a safe environment gave people the confidence to share ideas. Employees who had been inhibited were now able to contribute and collaborate in innovations that drove company success.

4) Focus on increasing the quantity of ideas generated, not just their quality
In comparison to their contemporaries Picasso, da Vinci & others like them had a similar ratio of success in the ideas they produced – the difference was, they produced more ideas. This meant that they had more successes and failures than their peers. Creativity and Innovation are not only the products of idea quality, but also idea volume. In the corporate world this means that we should not only be managing people toward the generation of quality ideas, but also aim for the generation of a high number of ideas. There is, however, a rider to this point. If organisations aren’t prepared to spend time and energy analysing and learning from failure then failed ideas will in fact erode value rather than create value. In this scenario, there isn’t sufficient capacity in the organisation to effectively absorb the implications of failure, and it would, instead be safer for the organisation to drop the illusion that they can be innovative.

5) Distinguish between excusable and inexcusable failure
In emphasising failure’s positive contributions to innovation, there is the danger that we may be left with the impression that it has been glorified beyond reason. This could not be further from the truth. The final point on positively harnessing failure is that all failure isn’t equal. Steve Wosniak, of Apple Computers renown, maintains that every failure contains information which if not learned will result in failure again and again. This type of failure is inexcusable failure. Excusable failure is restricted to being the first person in an organisation to fail in that manner – repetition of that same failure in any form, by anyone else in the organisation, is inexcusable. In such a situation, both individuals need to be taken to task. The first, for not sharing the learnings from their failure, and the second, for not taking the time to research and investigate their project and discovering the previous failure.

Edison’s attitude to “failure� is salutary. When asked why so many of his experiments failed, he explained that they were not failures. Instead he claimed, each time he had discovered a method that did not work.

In order to make “Innovation� more than just a word printed on posters, mugs, t-shirts, and caps we need to develop a realistic corporate cultural dynamic that embraces intelligent risk and inevitable failure. Successful businesses in the future will be those that have a “Failure Centre of Excellence� ensuring that no failure goes unanalysed, un-learned from, or un-applied.