D&T - Resilient

Learning from and overcoming failures

Meeting challenges with grit, courage and perserverance

Embracing failure and adjusting objectives in order to meet a goal

History’s archives show many attempts by inventors, including Thomas Edison. He understood that failed experiments are not actually a failure as long as they add to the constructive learning experience. For example, the light bulb was a result of accumulated lessons gained from thousands of attempts.

The Wright Brothers experienced thousands of tries until they achieved their “first flight.”

james dyson

The story of the first Vacuum cleaner - 5127 prototypes / models.

"It is important to experiment, fail along the way and learn from failures" said British entrepreneur and inventor Sir James Dyson.

"Failure is the way to progress," and if a person fails 95 per cent of the time, "you're doing very well".

"Success tells you nothing. Failure tells us that something is wrong... why it was wrong and how you might overcome it," said the chairman and founder of British technology firm Dyson, which is known for its bagless vacuum cleaners as well as air purifiers, hair dryers and lights.

For example, Dyson had a recent failure that cost him £500 million (21.2 Billion THB). His electric car project was announced in 2017 but scrapped in 2019. Though the project failed, "we've applied a lot of what we've learnt into what we're doing now", he said.

Last year, Dyson said that the company was focusing its efforts on developing the battery technology and other technologies from the car project, which his company hoped would take it to "exciting new directions".

Thirty years ago, Dyson’s imaginative reworking of the vacuum cleaner helped him on the way to becoming a billionaire.

His insight was to do away with the bag found in traditional floor cleaners and replace it with a fast-spinning motor that creates a cyclone of air to suck the carpet clean.

But Sir James’s success did not come from out of the blue. His first invention was the ball barrow, a wheelbarrow which featured a single moulded wheel (or ball) made from moulded plastic, which he released in 1974.

The design for his bagless vacuum cleaner took shape after he noticed a giant cyclone used to get rid of wood dust in a sawmill. The long slow process to miniaturise the device to fit inside a vacuum cleaner took no less than 5,127 different tweaks and modifications between 1979 and 1984. His wife’s income helped keep the family afloat as the inventor’s idea was initially rejected by British retailers.

It was the Japanese who came to the rescue. The first models, sold only in Japan, were such a hit that Sir James had enough in royalties to set up a research facility and factory in Malmesbury, in the English county of Wiltshire, in 1993. By the mid-90s, the bagless cleaner was being hailed as a triumph, and his R&D facility is still there.

Lego story

Between 1993 and 2004 Lego, the leading toy making company, faced a crisis. The company laid off 1,000 employees and the company president, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, stepped aside saying, “Maybe I’m not the right person to lead this company in the next generation.” The new president analyzed the problem and reached the main cause of the problem: that the company was operating a different way than it was original strategized.

Lego responded to the crisis by simply creating new products to face the strong competition from cheaper products and children’s increased intelligence. However, analyzing the process leads to understanding that new products will not solve the core problem; it was actually short-term products associated with movies such as Harry Potter and Star Wars that propelled it past Lego’s original bricks.

The result of evaluating the results was that Lego learned that in order to overcome their crisis, they needed to focus on its original brick themes and try to innovate using these bricks with new products such as Lego Friends. Lego also continued to develop movie-based themes that did well in the market, including products for the Star Wars films. In addition to the above return to the company’s original bricks, Lego adapted using an open innovation model to allow individuals to suggest model ideas through their website, Lego Ideas.

apple

In 2000, Apple produced the Apple Cube, a new Apple computer with a futuristic design and function. Apple Cube failed to achieve its expected sales, however Apple used the knowledge and experience they learned from this failed product to develop new materials for their later products such as iPhone, iPad, and iPods.

apple - bandai pippin (1996)

Bandai Pippin (1996)

The Pippin was Apple’s first and only foray into gaming consoles. While the device was ahead of its time, allowing players to compete against each other online, most peoples’ internet connection speeds were too slow for the feature when it was released in 1996. In a crowded market, the Pippin’s $599 (£450) price point ultimately meant the device was a flop.

Nothing is worse for designers than failing in a project, especially after spending time and effort in the development of ideas and turning them into a final product. When dealing with failure, most designers respond in one of two ways: they either neglect it and move forward to the next project, or get depressed and fill the air with negative energy or even lock themselves alone in a dark room.

design leaders and innovative companies consider failure a unique opportunity to learn and improve one’s self.

Tim Brown (CEO of IDEO - the world leading design company) describes failure as a source of learning for designers: “Failure is an incredibly powerful tool for learning. Designing experiments, prototypes, and interactions and testing them is at the heart of human-centered design. So is an understanding that not all of them are going to work. As we seek to solve big problems, we’re bound to fail. But if we adopt the right mindset, we’ll inevitably learn something from that failure.”

In the design world, many tend to think that creative designers rarely fail. It is as if innovative ideas come to the designers’ mind in the perfect form we see in the end product or service. However, this is not true. Creative minds go through many stages that range between failure and success in order to reach creative ideas.

Failure is a devastating stage in project process and many companies believe there is nothing worse than a failed project. Designers need to overcome the bad impacts of failure and start to think of it as a learning experience. Many lessons can be learned from failed projects such as identifying and evaluating the problem, using failure as an opportunity for innovation and change, and embracing feedback and criticism as an essential stage in the design process.

learning though mistakes

Personal account

We can (and should) all learn through failures. My third triathlon (a short sprint local triathlon) resulted in failure in that I had forgotton to fully check my bicycle before racking it and using it for the event. During the bike section I was speeding to a corner and as I started turning into the corner my front wheel collapsed and I flew over the handlebars and onto the road, breaking my cycle helmet and me in the process. I was knocked unconscious and thankfully one of the local farmers knew who I was and called an ambulance. I came round in the ambulance. I broke my eye socket, cheekbone, lip and took off skin.

I reflected on my mistakes and came back, trained really hard and then completed an Ironman triathlon.