Directed at how failure may be conducive to innovation

1. Failure
2013-10-11
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3. Brunelleschi’s dome
Construction work begun in 1296...
... its width made it impossible to cover...
... thus failure...
... until Brunelleschi had invented tools + methods 1436
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6. Fail frequently
Difficult childhood
Less than one year formal schooling
Failed in business in 1831
Defeated for legislature, '32
Again failed in business, '33
Elected to legislature, '34
Fiancée died, '35
Defeated for Speaker, '38
Defeated for Elector, '40
Married, wife a burden, '42
Only one of his four sons lived past the age of 18
Defeated for Congress, '43
Elected to Congress, '46
Defeated for Congress, '48
Defeated for Senate, '55
Defeated for Vice-President,
Defeated for Senate, '58
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7. It takes persistance
Louis L’Amour, successful author of over 100 western novels with over 200 M copies in
print, received 350 rejections before his first sale
During its first year, the Coca-Cola Company sold only 400 Cokes
Dr. Seuss's first children's book, And to Think that I Saw It on Mulberry Street, was rejected by
27 publishers. The 28th, Vanguard Press, sold 6 M copies
Chester Carlson took his idea to 20 corporations, including some of the biggest in the country.
All turned him down. In 1946, after seven years of rejections Haloid (= Xerox) bought it
18 publishers turned down Richard Bach's 10,000-word story about a "soaring" seagull,
Jonathan Livingston Seagull, before Macmillan published it 1970. By 1975, it had sold more
than 7 M copies just in the U.S.
Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor for lack of ideas. He also went bankrupt several
times
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8. Dyson, Edison...
Dyson:5,127 prototypes, thus 5,126 failures -- 15
years (Now 3rd gen)
At my 15th prototype, my 3rd child was born. By 2,627, my wife
and I were really counting pennies. By 3,727, my wife had to
give art lessons for extra cash
Edison: I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.’
Those 10,000 detours resulted in the Dictaphone, mimeograph, stock
ticker, storage battery, carbon transmitter and joint invention of the light
bulb.
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9. Method??
1928 Alexander Fleming accidentally left a cover off a petri dish for
a bacteria culture. The plate was contaminated by a mold
containing penicillin. Fleming’s lack of lab discipline made for a
breakthrough
In radioactive beta decay a nucleus produces either an electron or
a positron. These particles could have a range of energies —
which makes no sense if they come from the same process;
energy should be constant. This led to the discovery of the
neutrino.
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10. Babson analysis 635 globals
1-10% growth = 33% experimenters
11-20% growth = 46%
> 20% growth = 56%
”They drill more holes”
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11. Equates with experience!
Failure the way to learn
a language
to walk
to bike
to swim
to engineer
etc
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12. Several categories of failure
Failures may serve as innovation spurs differently
plain incompetence
straightforward impossibilities
lack of knowledge
happy failure
economic trade-offs
thinking traps
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15. Unacceptables!
95 % heli crashes = human errors
Tchernobyl
Costa Concordia
Sun coast highriser hotel
Surviving failures
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17. Several categories of failure
They may serve as innovation spurs differently
plain incompetence
straightforward impossibilities
lack of knowledge
happy failure = Serendipity
economic trade-offs
thinking traps
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18. Serendipity: something w/materials
Diamorph
Kanthal
Upsalite
Teflon
Saccharin
Post-It
SuperGlue
Vulcanized rubber
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19. ... and more
Microwave
Velcro
X-rays
Pacemaker
Bakelite
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20. Several categories of failure
They may serve as innovation spurs differently
plain incompetence
straightforward impossibilities
lack of knowledge
happy failure
economic trade-offs
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21. Impossibilities
Squaring the circle
The halting problem
Chaotic systems
Catastrophes (Thom)
Perpetuum mobile (all thermodynamics)
Translation (–> interpretation)
Understanding music
Uncertainty principle
Division by zero
Mythical man-month
Systems dynamics
Make parallel lines meet
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23. Several (part) synonyms
Like mistake
Like error
Like deviation
Like miss
Like inadequate
Like out of order
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24. Several categories of failure
They may serve as innovation spurs differently
plain incompetence
straightforward impossibilities
lack of knowledge
happy failure
economic trade-offs
thinking traps
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25. Lack of knowledge
Tacoma Narrows Bridge
John Hancock Tower
Warship Wasa
Millennium Bridge
The Tower of Pisa
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28. Google’s biggest failures
Google Wave (May 2009 to August 2010)
Google SearchWiki (November 2008 to March 2010)
Google Audio Ads (January 2006 to February 2009)
Google Video (January 2005 to January 2009) (sing)
Dodgeball (May 2005 to January 2009)
Jaiku (October 2007 to January 2009)
Google Notebook (May 2006 – January 2009)
Google Catalogs (December 2001 to January 2009)
Google Print Ads (November 2006 to January 2009)
Google Page Creator (April 2006 to August 2008)
Google Notebook (May 2006 – January 2009)
Google Answers (April 2002 to November 2006)
Google Health (2008 - 2011)
Google Reader, iGoogle RIP 2013
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29. Facebook flops
1. Beacon. 2007-2009 track purchases on other sites, then publish that information
2. Social Reader. 2010, “frictionless sharing,” clicked “ok” once and then everyone who knew you on Facebook
could see what you were reading.
3. Poke. Facebook sees new app, Snapchat, getting popular. Tries to buy Snapchat. Gets rebuffed. Creates clone of
Snapchat called Poke. But people still like Snapchat. Poke is a dud. As Farhad Manjoo points out, when the 800pound gorilla can’t even stamp out a tiny startup, this is not a good sign.
4. Places. Clone of Foursquare. 2010-2011
5. Find Friends Nearby. 2012, killed within 24 hours.
6. Deals. 2011 killed after four months.
7. Questions. 2010-2012
8. Mail. November 2010, -- November 2011, mocked as a failure.
9. Mobile App Ad Network. Launched last year, Shelved in December.
10. Project Spartan. The buzz on HTML5 started in June 2011. Ten months later, in August 2012, Zuckerberg
admitted that betting on HTML5 had been “the biggest mistake we made”
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30. Several categories of failure
They may serve as innovation spurs differently
plain incompetence
straightforward impossibilities
lack of knowledge
happy failure
economic trade-offs
thinking traps
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31. Other happy failure
...besides serendipity
Self-defeating future studies
Considering/opting for several alternatives
Planned obsolescense
Security measures (e g, water, fire watch, split pin)
{Failure by design}
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32. Several categories of failure
They may serve as innovation spurs differently
plain incompetence
straightforward impossibilities
lack of knowledge
happy failure
economic trade-offs
thinking traps
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33. Bathtub curve
All components same life: guarantee (Ford’s kingpin)
Fix rejects
Burn in: discover errors
TQM
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34. Broadening the scope
de Bono’s elevator hall
Kasumigaseki highriser: mid weakness
Yokohama highriser: computer controlled rebalancing weight
Integrated circuits: routing around misses
balancing yield vs capability
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36. Tuning up (small scale) production
Learn from, correct mistakes
Everone may pull the plug/light up
No inventory, JIT
Integrate tasks, no MTM
Reduce/eliminate set-up time
Tailored tooling
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37. Unavoidable deviations
6∑
... or, more generally, statistical measures
Match components
Humans too dirty? = clean room/flowbox
Buildings too shaky? = house within a house
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38. Some of Einstein’s Mistakes
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1905 Mistake in clock synchronization on which Einstein based special relativity
1905 Failure to consider Michelson-Morley experiment
1905 Mistake in transverse mass of high-speed particles
1905 Multiple mistakes in the mathematics/physics used to calculate liquid viscosity used to deduce molecule size
1905 Mistakes in the relationship between thermal radiation and quanta of light
1905 Mistake in the first proof of E = mc2
1906 Mistakes in the second, third, and fourth proofs of E = mc2
1907 Mistake in the synchronization procedure for accelerated clocks
1907 Mistakes in the Principle of Equivalence of gravitation and acceleration
1911 Mistake in the first calculation of the bending of light
1913 Mistake in the first attempt at a theory of general relativity
1914 Mistake in the fifth proof of E = mc2
1915 Mistake in the Einstein-de Haas experiment
1915 Mistakes in several attempts at theories of general relativity
1916 Mistake in the interpretation of Mach’s principle
1917 Mistake in the introduction of the cosmological constant (the “biggest blunder”)
1919 Mistakes in two attempts to modify general relativity
1925 Mistakes and more mistakes in the attempts to formulate a unified theory
1927 Mistakes in discussions with Bohr on quantum uncertainties
1933 Mistakes in interpretation of quantum mechanics (Does God play dice?)
1934 Mistake in the sixth proof of E = mc2
1939 Mistake in the interpretation of the Schwarzschild singularity and gravitational collapse (the “black hole”)
1946 Mistake in the seventh proof of E = mc2
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39. Several categories of failure
They may serve as innovation spurs differently
plain incompetence
straightforward impossibilities
lack of knowledge
happy failure
economic trade-offs
thinking traps
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40. Thinking traps
Conditional probabilistics
Black Swans (Taleb’s turkey)
Low vs high speed thinking
ex. anchoring
ex. caught in investment/sunk cost
ex. ownership bias
ex. confirmation bias
ex. incomplete info
Rules of the thumb
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41. Intelligent failure
Fail fast — cheap — early. Go out to fail. Fire, aim, repeat.
Genuine uncertainty – so go reduce it!
Set up for obtaining/generating information
Careful planning
Riskier to do nothing, or to analyze, than to act and fail
Managed quickly = not too much time between outcome and interpretation
Limited cost -- cost contained
Underlying assumptions documented in writing
Plan to test the assumptions
Risks of failing understood, to best extent mitigated
Commitments scaled to how understanding increases
Meaning of success defined – opportunities significant
+ Some of what’s learned familiar enough to inform other parts of the business
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42. Intelligent failures
If possible, start building in format/medium as close
to the finished goal as possible: iterate-iterate-iterate.
”Eat dogfood”
ß testing
+Partial failures far more valuable than total breakdowns
Build & try prototypes, mockups and samples
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43. Failure a teacher
1 Check your assumptions
Ask why results feel like a failure
What theory is contradicted?
Maybe the hypothesis failed, NOT the experiment
Or... was it the wrong experiment?
2 Seek Out the Ignorant
Talk to people unfamiliar. Explaining in simple terms may help to see in a new light
3 Encourage Diversity
4 Beware of Failure-Blindness
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44. Idea/failure dynamics
1 out of 60 succeeds
59 failures?
Allow for crude trial
=
Time, resources, discretionary funding
>> 1/60
= Several more than ’60’
Learning
= >>>>1/60
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45. Management measures
Google’s 20 %
3M’s recycling of experience, Spencer Silver
60 % formal product launches fail
Ratan Tata’s prize
Reward achievements, both failures and successes
Apple: >80 % failures
IBM: ’we spent X k$ on your training’
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46. Novel practices?
Failure inventory
Failure balance sheet
Failure case learning
Failure report dissemination
ROF?
CFO??
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47. Open innovation: failures for sale
Innocentive
yet2.com
http://marketplace.yet2.com/app/about/home
www.pgconnectdevelop.com
www.ideabounty.com
hwww.premisespremises.com/home.php
www.creativitypool.com
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48. The quality of failure
AXE because of
Spaghetti software
Convincing -- must act despite crisis
Other example: US constitution
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49. AXE: flexibility power
Mechanical modules (test at home)
New tech generations
Modular software (no spaghetti)
Application modules
Analog --> Digital
Failure avoidance
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50. Statistics fail: Black Swans
1) Avoid Optimization, Learn to Love Redundancy
2) Avoid prediction of remote payoffs
3) Beware the "atypicality" of remote events
4) Time. It takes much, much longer for a times series in the Fourth Quadrant to reveal its
property
5) Beware Moral Hazard
6) Metrics. Conventional metrics based on type 1 randomness don't work. Words like
"standard deviation" are not stable and does not measure anything
7) Where is the skewness?
8) Do not confuse absence of volatility with absence of risks.
9) Beware presentations of risk numbers.
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51. An ideal: (Taleb)
Anti-fragility
... failure in a system makes it more sturdy
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52. Failure
Trial & error
Thus informative
We learn from failures
... but are also (too) often chastened, even punished
A vile word -- mustn’t we learn to love it?
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53. Cont’d...
build upon the learning effect
avoid lethal accumulation of deviations
respect human capabilities
information overload
interaction design
thinking traps
incl. thinking fast/slow
success a great inspirer but lousy teacher: when you
succeed you never know how close to failure you are/were
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54. Dan Dennett: Intuition pumps
Sometimes you don’t just want to risk making
mistakes; you actually want to make them –
Mistakes is key to progress. Of course there are
cases when mistakes cannot be allowed – ask any
surgeon or airline pilot. But there are also times when
making mistakes is the only way to
go…. I often I have to encourage students to
cultivate the habit of making
mistakes, the best learning opportunities of all.
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55. Yogi Berra:
When you come to a fork in the road...
... take it!
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