I received an email from a client company I work with from time to time as an "ideation consultant".  I think that means I come up with ideas based on needs and wishes of their clients.  And since I love coming up with ideas, I would gladly do it for free but they insist on paying me anyhow. 

So they asked me a question about what they could do to eliminate failure in their innovation process.  And if doing so would be of greater value to their clients.  I suggested that they we asking the wrong questions.

I do not believe that failure can be eliminated.  Nor do I think it is a worthy goal to try and eliminate failure...either in our innovation process or in our lives.  Failure needs to be embraced.  It is an important component in the innovation process.  At least if you are trying to do anything important.

Here are the questions you need to be finding the answers to:

1- How can we accelerate the rate of failure in the marketplace?  Ie - how can we fail more and fail faster

2- How can we compress the time from coming up with an idea to having it in the marketplace to zero time?

3- How can we make the cost of failure so low (free) that it no longer becomes an obstacle to innovation?

There is no way to avoid failure.  The only way to win this game is to learn to love failure as much or more as you love success.  To embrace failure and partner with it.  Then, and only then, will failure teach you what you need to know to find the success you crave.

Fail fast, fail often, and learn.

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