A 5 minute presentation on the subject of failure and how it relates to design and innovation. Presented at the Atlanta Chapter of the Industrial Design Society of America. 2.27.14 | Meaghan Kennedy | Orange Sparkle Ball | illustrations by Lori Bailey

1. Failure in Five
presented at the
Atlanta Chapter of the
Industrial Design Society of America
2.27.14
Meaghan Kennedy
mbk@orangesparkleball.com
Illustrations by Lori Bailey

2. I had a hard time sorting what I wanted to
say about failure. I don't think much about
it...
It occurred to me that maybe the key to my
talk was to examine why I don't think much
about failure.

3. This is where a high school anecdote comes
in...
I won my high school's science award. I was
quite a high school science student. (!)
Regardless of my science prowess, I wasn't
always successful. One day I walked
into biology class and there was a
surprise pop quiz. I didn't know
anything on the quiz! The teacher,
a friend of my mom's, handed back my
graded paper with a pained look on his face.

4. The notebook paper had a giant F written in
red across my incorrect answers.
Even as a 14 year old, I was unconcerned.
I had failed miserably. I took the quiz home
to show my mom. She chuckled but didn't
say much.

5. The next day I came downstairs and my
Failure of a quiz had been framed and put
on our TV in the living room.

6. It stayed there throughout my years in high
school and into college.
My framed Failure was always a point of
confusion for my friends, especially when I
explained that my mom had framed it.
As I reflect now on my mom's behavior, I
wonder if this was a purposeful lesson or
just one of many examples of her irreverent
sense of humor? Or maybe both?
Regardless of whether it was deliberate or
not, that mentality has served me well in life.

7. Because I don't dwell on my failures, I don't
take on failure as part of my identity.
If something I do doesn't turn out as I had
hoped, I try something different.
There are many of examples in history of
people who tried a bunch of things before
being successful. Were these people failures
until they were successes?
If these people had been stifled by failure,
we wouldn't have …

8. the theory of relativity…
Einstein was a dismal failure in school.

9. the light bulb,
Thomas Edison tried hundreds of bulbs
before getting one to light.

10. or a bucket of KFC chicken!
Colonel Sanders bounced from career to
career before finding success franchising
his chicken concept.

11. Since my pop quiz Failure, I have failed
many times. As I was thinking about
this presentation, I wanted to focus on
design failures.
When do we, as a design company, fail?
I thought about projects where we failed
so that tonight we could dissect them and
learn our lessons of failure.
However, I kept stumbling over which
projects I would define as failures...
When I started to think about our project
failures, I sometimes got to ones where we
were pleased with our solution but the client
wasn't. Or worse yet, the client was
pleased, and we hated the solution.
Which of those are failures?

12. Maybe it's the consumer who defines
failure?

13. 7Eleven is currently doing a stuffed
Dorrito test in its stores.
If consumers love stuffed Dorritos, they
could be successful for both Dorritos and
7Eleven. However, in terms of food I’d like
to eat, they are a horrifying failure!
My point here is that failure isn't really
so black and white.

14. This idea of a consumer test is big right now
in business innovation. Innovation thinking
is all about a "fail fast" mentality.
In other words, get products into consumer
tests quickly to see if consumers like them...
if they will fail or succeed.

15. In this scenario, failure is just a data point in
the overall innovation process. If the
process is successful, things will fail.

16. So maybe this innovation paradigm is
actually just a metaphor for life. Failure is
a part of the process.
It doesn't define you.
So...
How were you taught to think about failure?

17. Does failure mean that you lost?
Is success a win?
If you didn't have my irreverent mom, you
might have been taught to avoid failure at
all costs. That's stifling. People, and
companies, spend so much time trying to
avoid failure, that they become immobilized
and forget to try new things.

18. My feeling about failure is that it is just part
of a vast range of life experiences.
I have great respect for people who are brave
enough to try things, even if it means they
might fail.

19. So, I think the reason I had trouble sorting
what to say about failure is that I think
bravery is the important concept here, not
failure.

20. thank you