Liam Bleakley
Success is the goal of many. In the world we live in, failure can often seem like a daunting obstacle standing in the way, but according to groundbreaking research by Professor Dashun Wang and his colleagues at Northwestern University, failure isn’t just a stepping stone — it can be a prerequisite for success. Developing the expertise and skills necessary to operate an organisation at optimal efficiency doesn’t come without its fair share of mistakes and failures. Even the most skilled operations manager with the requisite qualification, like the Kettering University online Masters in Operations Management, and years of experience will likely have failed multiple times throughout their career. This article will explore Dashun et al’s article, titled Quantifying the dynamics of failure across science, startups, and security, and explore its arguments about how success often comes after a period of repeated failures — provided that lessons are learned.
Overview of Wang’s Findings
The study, published in the November 2019 issue of Nature, examined records of more than 700,000 grant applications, venture capital startups, and similar endeavours to try and understand what made up the success-failure dynamic of each. What they found was that success is not the result of an uninterrupted upwards trajectory, but instead in a process intertwined with failure. The first thought after reading this is obvious: plenty of ventures, applications, and companies fail, so what’s the big differentiator? Learning. The study found that the ability to analyze, evaluate, and improve on mistakes leading up to failure spelled the difference between permanent and temporary failure for individuals and companies.
The key takeaway from the study is that failing again and again only works if you learn from your previous failures. In other words, failure isn’t a golden ticket to success. The important factor of separation is what Wang refers to as the “critical threshold” of learning. Those who manage to pass this threshold do so by making course corrections and applying new strategies based on where they went wrong previously, making them more likely to succeed in subsequent attempts.
Why is Failure Important in Business?
Some view failure as being final in the world of business. Companies collapse, products flop, people get fired, and ideas falter. Take a moment and look at it through Wang’s perspective: failure isn’t a dead end, it’s just part of a feedback loop. So long as your failure isn’t completely catastrophic, it’s the best teacher you’ll ever have, providing insight that you just won’t get when you’re winning. Some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs attribute their achievements to failure.
For example, in the early stages of Steve Jobs’ career, he was fired from the very company he helped create. Instead of giving up then and there, he used this opportunity to learn from the mistakes that led to his ousting, and then returned to Apple with a vision that shaped the world of technology forever. Similarly, Oprah Winfrey was demoted from her first job as a TV anchor, then proceeded to become one of the most influential media moguls in American history. These examples prove that failure can fuel resilience and growth if approached with the right mindset — a setback can just be part of a greater journey towards a different kind of success.
Of course, these are just anecdotes, and the concept of failure as a prerequisite for success extends far beyond individuals. When you fear failure, you become risk averse, and always pick the well-trodden, safe path that can stifle innovation. When failure is viewed as a learning opportunity in a company’s culture, that’s where the real fun begins. X (formerly Google X) is a big fan of ‘moonshot’ projects, taking on feats like self-driving cars, showing that they’re fostering an atmosphere that allows innovation to really flourish.
Wang’s research supports a growing body of evidence that suggests that failure isn’t the end of the world, and could be the beginning of a new, more successful chapter in your personal or professional journey. In business, failures can be stepping stones to success provided that growth and learning are front-of-mind when failures inevitably happen. The true measure of success is in how we learn and grow.
