Matt WamplerCEO & Co-Founder, ClearCOGS · CEO & Co-Founder, ClearCOGS 🔪

💡 Embrace Mistakes: How Failure Fuels Innovation

11 Jun 2025 · 1 min

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1:11

In this town‑hall style monologue, the speaker argues that organizations should deliberately set a goal of making mistakes—fast, one‑time errors that are quickly identified and learned from—to drive innovation. He explains that headquarters typically focuses on standardization and scaling, not on pioneering ideas, but it can still support innovation by de‑risking decisions and fostering an experimental culture. The speaker warns that a lack of visible failures either signals a lack of innovation or a lack of transparency, both of which are detrimental. By encouraging rapid, single‑instance mistakes and ensuring they are openly discussed and learned from, teams can continuously improve and sustain innovative output.

Chapters

I gave a town hall years ago. I said, our objective for the next year is we're going to make mistakes. And everyone looked at me. And I said, but we're only going to make them once. And we're going to make them fast. And we're going to learn and get better. The headquarters is where things get standardized and scaled. It's not usually where innovation comes from. But you can support innovation from headquarters by de-risking decision-making, fostering a culture of experimentation. If you have no failed projects, You have no innovation or you have no transparency and things are failing. They're just not telling you about it. Both are bad for very different reasons. And so knowing that if you're really trying new things, there are things you try that won't work. And that is so healthy as long as you support it and you learn from it. I gave a town hall years ago. I said, our objective for the next year is we're going to make mistakes. And everyone looked at me and I said, but we're only going to make them once and we're going to make them fast and we're going to learn and get better because Our job is to do new things. Our job is to be innovative. And if we're not making any mistakes, there's just no way we're being innovative if that's true.