Learning to Fail

Two disparate items came together to form this post.  One was a reading of The Last Lecture  by Randy Pausch.  The other was a conversation that I had with my nephew about the innovation and creativity that drives the US economy.  You will remember that Randy Pausch was a computer engineering professor that found out that he had terminal pancreatic cancer.  His university sponsored a lecture series for professors who were asked to give a lecture as if it were the last thing that they did in life.  For Pausch, this was a real life event.  The book has a number of homilies about life and living that, at first reading, seem obvious.  However, a reminder of first principles never hurts and, after some reading, you find yourself enjoying the conventional wisdom  that we seem to forget.  In any event Pausch died and the book was published posthumously.  For the curious, here is the link to the actual lecture:  ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo.

What also comes to mind is the book The Startup Nation by Dan Senor and Saul Singer.  This book chronicles the amazing number of innovative startups in Israel.  On a per capita basis Israel is by far the largest producer of creative and innovative ideas on the planet.

Regarding my conversation with my nephew, he opined that the US would come around because it was and will be the world leader in innovation and creativity.  My rejoinder was that the US was not great because if its successes in innovative technology but because it embraced failure as a mechanism by which good ideas come out of many failures.  This observation was made well before I saw the same sentiment in Pausch's book. 

The US rewards failure as much as it rewards success.  As Pausch points out in his book many companies hire CEOs from failed companies because they have learned from experience what works and what doesn't.  Also, the US has a large enough capital market to fund enough failures so that the successes shine through.  Theses capital funds have been extended to Israel that boasts the largest investment in venture capital in the world outside of the United States.   

One of the reasons that the US has always lead in innovation is that the market picks the winners and the losers.  In countries where the central government makes investments in innovation it is the government that picks the winners and more often the losers.  Governments are not good as this; the market is.  While China and Korea have gifted innovators their talents are more focused on engineering--that is making an innovative idea work in the real world.  And they are good at it.  But as for innovation, they lag far behind the US and Israel.

Canada is a small country that has a very shallow venture investment pool.  What innovation there is is soon lost to the US in a manner similar to Israel.  Mature companies are less likely to grow in Canada before they are sold off to their American investors.  Also, the depth of venture capital in Canada does not allow for much failure.  Therefore, the cream does not rise to the top.  There are a few examples of Canadian successes but they pale in comparison to innovative ideas and companies in Boston and Silicon Valley.

One of the distressing facts of modern life is that embracing failure is not taught as a life skill.  Where soccer games have no score or where everyone wins a trophy, there will be no striving for success in the light of failure.  Failure is an evolving process that, with perseverance, leads to success.  It is best learned young.  Failure to learn that lesson results in adults that are mired in entitlement and rarely strive to overcome their failures.  

So, fail away until you succeed. You'll be a better person for it.

Bernie.