Billionaire entrepreneur, Elon Musk urges innovators to celebrate and embrace misfires, setbacks and flops. He likes experimental culture of “Take risks, Learn by Blowing things up. Revise, Repeat”. After losing another starship rocket this week 10 minutes after lift-off, Space X said “ with a test like this, success comes from what we learn”.

Influential organisational psychologist, Amy Edmonson’s  Right Kind of Wrong promotes intelligent failures and learn from them, reveals How we get failure wrong – and how to get it right. We used to think of failure as a problem, to be avoided at all costs. Now, we are often told that failure is desirable – that we must fail fast , fail often.

She tells vivid stories ranging from the history of open heart surgery to the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster, all to ask a simple, provocative question: What if it is only by learning to fail the we can hope to truly succeed?

We must take inspiration from the intelligent failures inherent to innovation but risks glossing over the varied failures which includes basic and complex failures.

When an Air Florida crew absent-mindedly approved the disabling of anti-ice instruments in wintry conditions in 1982, they committed a basic failure  in a variable. Context: it led to the flight’s fatal crashing the frozen Potomac river. 

Edmondson criticises organisations that suppress and demonise intelligent failures that can advance understanding.

Right Kind of Wrong: Why Learning to Fail Can Teach Us to Thrive by Amy Edmondson, Cornerstone Press £22, Afria Books $28.99, 368 pages.

Don’t miss the opportunity to fail well

Billionaire entrepreneur, Elon Musk urges innovators to celebrate and embrace misfires, setbacks and flops. He likes experimental culture of “Take risks, Learn by Blowing things up. Revise, Repeat”. After losing another starship rocket this week 10 minutes after lift-off, Space X said “ with a test like this, success comes from what we learn”.

Influential organisational psychologist, Amy Edmonson’s  Right Kind of Wrong promotes intelligent failures and learn from them, reveals How we get failure wrong – and how to get it right. We used to think of failure as a problem, to be avoided at all costs. Now, we are often told that failure is desirable – that we must fail fast , fail often.

She tells vivid stories ranging from the history of open heart surgery to the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster, all to ask a simple, provocative question: What if it is only by learning to fail the we can hope to truly succeed?

We must take inspiration from the intelligent failures inherent to innovation but risks glossing over the varied failures which includes basic and complex failures.

When an Air Florida crew absent-mindedly approved the disabling of anti-ice instruments in wintry conditions in 1982, they committed a basic failure  in a variable. Context: it led to the flight’s fatal crashing the frozen Potomac river. 

Edmondson criticises organisations that suppress and demonise intelligent failures that can advance understanding.

Right Kind of Wrong: Why Learning to Fail Can Teach Us to Thrive by Amy Edmondson, Cornerstone Press £22, Afria Books $28.99, 368 pages.