14 Oct Fail Fast, Fail Smart: Iterations that Lead to Perfection
Fail fast, fail often, but fail smart in order to pave the way for innovation.
Constantly experimenting with creative ideas may be a risk few are willing to take, however, the tech-heads in Silicon Valley’s super competitive, rapidly digitizing environment embrace the concept of failure as a stepping stone to success, through its role in building a culture of innovation. In today’s complex and ever-changing business environment, the faster you execute your ideas the better, because in the time you take to ‘perfect’ your product, the variables and components of the situation might’ve changed. Also, getting your product out there and improving it based on market feedback for its next iteration may be better than waiting to perfect the product.
Silicon Valley executives nurture this mindset through encouraging innovation and seeing them as ‘smart failures’, and encouraging an environment free from the fear of rejection! To do so requires leaders to create a workplace culture where experimentation and autonomy are encouraged, and seeing failure as a prerequisite to innovation. What’s more important than succeeding every time is to instill a company culture of having the resilience to bounce back and the courage to embrace risk and open the door to future successes.
However, there is a difference between smart failure and preventable failure. Smart failure is an occasion that you learn from, and a necessary step closer to the direction of having a perfect product or idea. Smart failure will bring insights that are key to future innovation. After all, many of history’s most important inventions, including the steam engine, were built upon the failures of previous inventors.
Sources:
Image from yelom.myphonecompany.co
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sunniegiles/2018/04/30/how-to-fail-faster-and-why-you-should/#40a526bbc177
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nvidia/2018/08/13/robotics-solutions-using-deep-learning/#65a14cff7a5f
No Comments