Editor | On 09, May 2011

We hear all the time about how few new ideas actually wind up as commercially successful (I.e. make money) products or services and we all wish the percentage is higher. But when failure does occur, it’s important that we learn from it. There’s a tendency to bury problems so that people aren’t embarrassed and egos aren’t bruised. If we could learn, however, how to celebrate and learn from failure, so that its learnings are passed on to others, then good has come out of it. I was recently sent a link to some Honda videos by Harry Vardis at Kennesaw State University.

http://dreams.honda.com/#/allstories

I invite you to view a few of these videos and ask yourself these questions:

1. Is there a “dream” for your company or organization? Or are you content and focused only on cash flow? Have you clearly stated the “Ideal Result”, as we say in the TRIZ world?

2. How do you treat people who present you a vision that does not seem immediately practical and easy to achieve? Do you support them? How? If not, why not? What happens to those people?

3. How do you treat people who fail intelleigently? What happens to the learning? Do you celebrate mistakes that improve your capabilities? Or do you bury them so that no one is embarrassed and the mistake is repeated a few years later?

4. Do you think you are too smart to learn from others? Why? Who else needs to do or provide the function that you do? (Not the product or thing you make).