The Hidden Psychology From Failure

Picture credit: inspirasi.co

"If you were not successful at first, try and try again. This is a wise sentence that has always been instilled since we were little, to be sure. But is there any scientific evidence that successive failures are positive and trigger innovation to move forward?"

Tom Pohlmann, chief strategist and value at Mu Sigma's data analysis firm, said the evidence exists. They have studied deeply the idea of ​​successive failure. "Rapid rhythm changes in the business make the company increasingly pressured to continue to innovate, new technologies can answer the challenge through the concept of innovation-as-a-way," he said.

Mu Sigma's report shows rapid and continuous failure is the best approach and the key to success in many aspects of business.

Researchers at Mu Sigma called it in his analysis as "the power of extreme experiments." They claim that science can show that failure triggers innovation in the future. This approach is widely echoed by engineers working in pharmaceuticals, materials science, and the automotive industry.

"Those at the forefront of technology must go beyond the limits," said Ray Gibbs, CEO of Haydale, a company studying materials engineering based in the UK, America and South Korea studying graphene to improve the quality of everyday materials such as inks and coatings. Gibbs believes that in order to develop successful products you should try many different ideas to finally get the final result, or in the sense of learning from failure.

Failure is not a bad thing for business. It only leads us to another thing that will happen, which if executed properly will be built on those failures, says Pohlmann. Even Apple's technology companies experienced many failures, such as portable computers, The Newton, in the early days, which was hastily stopped by Steve Jobs.

Think Back to Your Approach

"Many people still think that failure is a sign of personal incompetence and they try to avoid it as much as possible," said Andrew Filev, CEO and founder of Wrike, a software company in Mountain View, California. "But when you want to build a business as a series of experiments, you will see that failure is unavoidable in the process."

The Filev company must learn from its initial failures. "We started the business by providing project management services to other companies, but as we set up our customer projects, we came to realize that we needed tools to work better together.We built Wrinke to do it, and soon realized that this is also a problem for in other businesses as well. " The result: Filev launches an entirely new company.

Similarly, Lopo Champalimaud, CEO of Treatwell, also later changed his business. The company, which originally was a daily deals site called Wahanda, changed its shape into a beauty care booking site. "I do not know anyone can build a business that has not changed much and needs to change following it," Champalimaud said. "It would be boring if it was easy."

Of course, innovating continuously is not something new. Each design from steam train to stove has changed. "Every innovation has risks, there is always danger when trying something, that there will be failure," explains Stitian Westlake, Executive Director of NESTA, an independent organization working to improve business innovation in the UK.

Changing The Flow

For many companies, the financial crisis of 2007 then made the creative process hampered. Firms are reluctant to take risks and are more afraid of competition and time and cost pressures.

However, almost a decade later, technology companies and digital start-ups restore the spirit of the experiment on the map. A strategy assisted by technological developments - from Big Data to cloud computing - will dramatically reduce the cost of experiments. Digital economic growth means "knowledge becomes faster than ever, forcing companies to think fast and efficiently," Pohlmann said.

One area that is very important in its application is on software development. Unlike, assembling stoves or refrigerators for example, software is an industry that easily tries new things and then can send updates to consumers to fix things that are lacking. In OpenStack, a company that creates open-source software for data centers, the philosophy of "rapid and continuous failure" has shaped innovation. The company formed itself from experiments with new technology, underlining that a real breakthrough would not happen if it only followed a long-term strategy, but from a risk-taking decision.

"Think about an app on your smart phone," says Westlake from NESTA. As the cost of experiments is lower, it is quite easy to approach a "rapid and continuous failure" in the industry.

This is something that cannot be done before by a conventional hardware product. "As the industry changes with technology, there will be more profits to explore and take risks," he added.

Deprecated Before Launch

Car industry for example; "The luxury cars are outdated the minute they are delivered (to the sales department), but then you see another car company like Elon Musk's Tesla, who can keep upgrading the operating system in his cars," Westlake said. In-car operating systems, such as satellite navigation, are often outdated quickly. Now just like iPhone, car software can be easily updated remotely.

The retail, music and pharmaceutical sectors also choose this kind of walk-through approach. "It can be a troubling thing but it's actually a good thing, and it's a necessary thing," Pohlmann said. "It forces companies to undermine predetermined concepts and switch to a constant mode of experimentation and learning."

For Pohlmann, innovation is like throwing an arrow to a moving board: You can try to throw a more accurate arrow, or you can throw more to increase the probability of reaching the goal.