cc image used courtesy of connors got heart on flickr

So often when talking about innovation or change we hear someone say don’t be afraid to fail. That is harder than it sounds, I mean really; who wants to fail? Who wants to stand up in front of a group, no matter how big or how small and admit they were wrong. I know some people would admit they were wrong, but no one wants to be wrong.

Part of the problem is failure is seen as a waste of time, of money or other resources.  But we can learn a lot from failure as Jonah Lehrer writes Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up

Too often, we assume that a failed experiment is a wasted effort. But not all anomalies are useless. Here’s how to make the most of them

1. Check Your Assumptions - Ask yourself why this result feels like a failure. What theory does it contradict? Maybe the hypothesis failed, not the experiment.
2. Seek Out the Ignorant -  Talk to people who are unfamiliar with your experiment. Explaining your work in simple terms may help you see it in a new light.
3. Encourage Diversity - If everyone working on a problem speaks the same language, then everyone has the same set of assumptions.
4. Beware of Failure-Blindness - It’s normal to filter out information that contradicts our preconceptions. The only way to avoid that bias is to be aware of it.

Read more

• Failing to Learn and Learning to Fail (Intelligently): How Great Organizations Put Failure to Work to Improve and Innovate
• Kent Bottles: Why Smart People Don’t Learn from Failures
• How You Learn More from Success Than Failure
• Try, Try Again, or Maybe Not
• Trying and Failing Enhances Learning, According to Research by Nate Kornell
• Getting It Wrong: Surprising Tips on How to Learn
• What Steve Wozniak Learned From Failure
• The Role of Failure in Learning

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