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Letters to a Young Manager

Fail Fast, #134
LTYM > Innovation



Dear Adam,
***
You are right in saying that innovation has become the new buzzword. Everyone wants to be seen as doing it, and no one wants to be labeled lacking it. But it's not easy becoming an innovative organization. Why? Because the culture needs to shift to embrace failures, and that's against the grain in most organizations. And it's not simply a matter of the profit motive at work; most nonprofits also struggle with failure as a positive.

Why are failures so important? In short, they are the barometer of experimenting. Thomas J. Watson, former CEO of IBM famously said:
      "Would you like me to give you a formula for... success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You're thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all... you can be discouraged by failure / or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember that's where you'll find success. On the far side.” [1]

To put it another way, if you are not experimenting, you are not innovating. And experimenting means some of the attempts are failures.

I remember a story about Babe Ruth, the baseball home run king for many years, and an idol for many sports fans, young an old. He once said that "Every strike brings me closer to the next home run." This is most often seen as the power of positive thinking, reframing a negative as a positive. And that's very important. But there's more than meets the eye here. Babe Ruth had 1,330 lifetime strikeouts, and he had 714 home runs, a record that stood until 1968 when Hank Aaron took the lead. That's almost twice as many failures as successes.

I'll leave you with a quote from Internet marketing guru, Seth Godin, who had this to say:
      "Fail fast and cheap. Fail often. Fail in a way that doesn’t kill you. This is the only way to learn what works and what doesn’t. TiVo had one remarkable idea, but they needed far more than that. You are going to make wrong decisions, no question about it. Make them fast and cheap." [2]
So what's your portfolio of experiments?
***
Yours,
Ed
________________________

[1] See Thomas J. Watson quotes at http://en.thinkexist.com/quotes/thomas_j._watson/
[2] Seth Godin, The Big Moo, p. 144, http://www.sethgodin.com/bigmoo/free/wrongdecisions.pdf

Takeaways:

Fail your way to success

Discussion Questions:

1) What does it mean to have a portfolio of experiments?
2) How can you double your experiments and failures? What if additional budget was not available?
3) Is there a way you can be more disciplined about experiments? VG and Chris Trimble call it the disciplined experiment, being able to state what you've learned from he failure and what you will change for the next experiment.[3]

For Further Reading:

[3] Also see Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble's, "The Other Side of Innovation: Solving the Execution Challenge", HBR Press, 2010
See "The Light Bulb," LTYM #544



© Copyright 2005, 2024, E. G. Happ, All Rights Reserved.


"Dave Boyer is president of Teleflex, a profitable maker of high-tech control systems, based in Limerick, Pennsylvania. .. The key to [their new product growth] success rate is what Boyer calls "failing forward." That is, failing fast--and learning from it so as to make the next and smarter step quickly. The Teleflex team talks openly about "failing forward," and sees this openness as a prime ingredient in their success."

Thomas J. Watson of IBM said:

"Would you like me to give you a formula for... success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You're thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all... you can be discouraged by failure / or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember that's where you'll find success. On the far side.” --Thomas J. Watson quote http://en.thinkexist.com/quotes/thomas_j._watson/

Thomas Edison said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." --Brainyquote http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomasaed132683.html

"I have not failed 10,000 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work." --Edison, http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanfurr/2011/06/09/how-failure-taught-edison-to-repeatedly-innovate/


-----Original Message-----
From: Granger-Happ, Edward
Sent: Tuesday, June 27, 2006 11:51 PM
To: Carolyn Miles (cmiles@savechildren.org)
Subject: ESMT Question on Innovation

Carolyn,
 
Concerning your question about “how do we build innovation in what we do,” I was reminded of two statements from our business author colleagues.  The first was the research Jim Collins did for his first book that, rather than follow a definitive corporate strategy, great companies multiply and vary their experiments like mad, letting strongest win and the weakest fade.  The second was Tom Peters quote from Johnson & Johnson’s founder that “Failure is our most important product,”  and Peters own conclusion that in today’s world, innovation means “failing fast.” 

These points are not about accepting failure as an organization, or about colossal failure; rather, I believe innovation comes from many small experiments, with many small failures and a few notable successes that are then taken to scale and make for huge successes and brilliant hindsight strategy.  Or in other words, the strategy is in the prototypes.  Here I like the image of Thomas Edison trying hundreds of filaments before getting the light bulb right.

Applying this to Diana Myers’ presentation this morning, the most important thing I heard was the number of pilot programs DPC has undertaken.  I’d like to see more of this, and see it in more departments.  Our initial PDA and VOIP pilots are success examples from IS, while the early Domino ASISt prototype is a notable failure.  The key is being able to retire the failed pilots quickly (cut your losses) and recognize and invest in the successes (let your winners run, to borrow the investment analogy.)  That would be a culture change for STC, where letting go is so often hard to do.  (Also, the number of small failures can’t deter the repeated investment in more new pilots—embracing failure, if-you-will.)

I leave you with two quotes.  The first is from Collins’ book, building a Darwin’s work (without being Darwinian J), that resonated with me.  The second is one of my favorite on strategic planning.

“We like to describe the evolutionary process as “branching and pruning.”  The idea is simple:  If you add enough branches to a tree (variation) and intelligently prune the deadwood (selection), the you’ll likely evolve into a collection of healthy branches well positioned to prosper in an ever-changing environment.”  Built to Last, p. 146

"A good deal of corporate planning ... is like a ritual rain dance.  It has no effect on the weather that follows, but those who engage in it think it does. ... Moreover, much of the advice related to corporate planning is directed at improving the dancing, not the weather."  -- Brian Quinn, Dartmouth Univ.

Ed

p.s. Michael Schrage, an MIT professor, wrote a book on innovation.  He once offered to me to stop by STC on one of his NY trips to talk to us about prototyping.  It may be interesting to have him address the wider topic of innovation some time.