To be a success, you have to remember your screw ups - write your failure resume

Ateneo Professor on Entrepreneurship

                                        



From Fast Company by by David and Tom Kelley  a repost

What is significant about this is its relation to our recent Special Report is that the author founded Ideo. Tom founded the D School at Stanford U. David and Tom Kelly are co authors of recent book "Creative Confidence, Unlocking the Creative Potential in Us All." Tom was an author of the book Art of Innovation (Ideo) and Ten Faces of Innovation (Ten Faces of Innovation infographic)

Failure resume/catalogue

The authors prescribe making your own screw up catalogue (or resume)  And we take note that innovation is a numbers game.  It is sometimes a game of hit and miss.  And the success is a result of luck or serendipity.

To learn from failure, you have to own it. You have to be realistic and make no alibis about it. You can enhance your persona through candor, humility,  and honesty. Only then can you move on towards success.  Some professional cloud their thinking by blaming market corrections, economy, etc. rather than themselves for making a wrong assessment, call or decision (you call that hubris?)

One such company that catalogue theirs miscues is Bessemer Venture Capital and has made a site of Top Exits and their failures are catalogued under the title" Anti Portfolio".  They passed up opportunity for Paypal, and even Fed Ex which they passed 7x which is now currently worth $30B. Another advocate of anti portfolio is David Cowan, who passed up Larry Page and Sergi Brin who worked on Google at the garage of a neighbor.  Forbes Midas List ranks as one of the top VC who turns many ideas into gold.  Did his failure experience help him

Fail Con

Failure conferences are now common and Tina Sellig Prof at Stanford (and one those who influenced the author at Bangkok REE conference on innovation) asks students for failure resumes.  Coming to grips with failure forces the individual to learn from mistakes to do much better.  Tina is the Exec Director of Stanford Technology Ventures which nurtures future entrepreneurs.  She wrote a book What I Wish I Knew when I was 20

                           


              





                                      

Failcon fails to fail