The Path to Success through Innovation

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

A company that truly embraces innovation as a path to company / product improvement should also adopt the Fail Often / Fail Quickly methodology, this can be a real head spin for entrenched companies as why would you reward failure?

The Fail Often / Fail Quickly methodology comes from the pretty much universal constant that your 1st idea isn’t your best one, it might be the seed that starts but it definitely won’t be the finished product. A famous example of this is WD-40, you may not know this was the chemist Norm Larsen’s 40th attempt to create a chemical that would prevent rust by displacing water. That’s 40 attempts, not many bosses would let you fail 39 times on a project without asking serious questions!

But look at it another way as long as you are learning something from each “trial” (Let’s stop calling them failures) you are fine tuning the end product, and as long as you are getting through these iterations quickly and not wasting large amounts of time down rabbit holes it will ultimately get you to the Million Dollar product much faster.

The image below surmises what people see of a successful product and the reality of the cycle behind the scenes.

Don’t ever get disheartened by failure in anything in your career or life, pick yourself up, take stock, learn what went wrong that time and why. Then make the next attempt better each time.

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