Failure

2013-10-11

torsdag 24 oktober 13

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Brunelleschi’s dome

Construction work begun in 1296...

... its width made it impossible to cover...

... thus failure...

... until Brunelleschi had invented tools + methods 1436

torsdag 24 oktober 13

torsdag 24 oktober 13

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Fail frequentlyDifficult childhood

Less than one year formal schooling

Failed in business in 1831 Defeated for legislature, '32

Again failed in business, '33 Elected to legislature, '34

Fiancée died, '35

Defeated for Speaker, '38 Defeated for Elector, '40

Married, wife a burden, '42

Only one of his four sons lived past the age of 18 Defeated for Congress, '43

Elected to Congress, '46

Defeated for Congress, '48 Defeated for Senate, '55

Defeated for Vice-President,

Defeated for Senate, '58

torsdag 24 oktober 13

It takes persistanceLouis L’Amour, successful author of over 100 western novels with over 200 M copies in print, received 350 rejections before his first sale

During its first year, the Coca-Cola Company sold only 400 Cokes

Dr. Seuss's first children's book, And to Think that I Saw It on Mulberry Street, was rejected by 27 publishers. The 28th, Vanguard Press, sold 6 M copies

Chester Carlson took his idea to 20 corporations, including some of the biggest in the country. All turned him down. In 1946, after seven years of rejections Haloid (= Xerox) bought it

18 publishers turned down Richard Bach's 10,000-word story about a "soaring" seagull, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, before Macmillan published it 1970. By 1975, it had sold more than 7 M copies just in the U.S.

Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor for lack of ideas. He also went bankrupt several times

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Dyson, Edison...Dyson:5,127 prototypes, thus 5,126 failures -- 15 years (Now 3rd gen)

At my 15th prototype, my 3rd child was born. By 2,627, my wife and I were really counting pennies. By 3,727, my wife had to give art lessons for extra cash

Edison: I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.’

Those 10,000 detours resulted in the Dictaphone, mimeograph, stock ticker, storage battery, carbon transmitter and joint invention of the light bulb.

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Method??

1928 Alexander Fleming accidentally left a cover off a petri dish for a bacteria culture. The plate was contaminated by a mold containing penicillin. Fleming’s lack of lab discipline made for a breakthrough

In radioactive beta decay a nucleus produces either an electron or a positron. These particles could have a range of energies — which makes no sense if they come from the same process; energy should be constant. This led to the discovery of the neutrino.

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Babson analysis 635 globals

1-10% growth = 33% experimenters

11-20% growth = 46%

> 20% growth = 56%

”They drill more holes”

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Equates with experience!Failure the way to learn

a language

to walk

to bike

to swim

to engineer

etc

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Several categories of failureFailures may serve as innovation spurs differently

plain incompetence

straightforward impossibilities

lack of knowledge

happy failure

economic trade-offs

thinking traps

torsdag 24 oktober 13

torsdag 24 oktober 13

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Unacceptables!

95 % heli crashes = human errors

Tchernobyl

Costa Concordia

Sun coast highriser hotel

Surviving failures

torsdag 24 oktober 13

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Several categories of failureThey may serve as innovation spurs differently

plain incompetence

straightforward impossibilities

lack of knowledge

happy failure = Serendipity

economic trade-offs

thinking traps

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Serendipity: something w/materialsDiamorph

Kanthal

Upsalite

Teflon

Saccharin

Post-It

SuperGlue

Vulcanized rubbertorsdag 24 oktober 13

... and more

Microwave

Velcro

X-rays

Pacemaker

Bakelite

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Several categories of failureThey may serve as innovation spurs differently

plain incompetence

straightforward impossibilities

lack of knowledge

happy failure

economic trade-offs

torsdag 24 oktober 13

ImpossibilitiesSquaring the circle

The halting problem

Chaotic systems

Catastrophes (Thom)

Perpetuum mobile (all thermodynamics)

Translation (–> interpretation)

Understanding music

Uncertainty principle

Division by zero

Mythical man-month

Systems dynamics

Make parallel lines meettorsdag 24 oktober 13

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Several (part) synonymsLike mistake

Like error

Like deviation

Like miss

Like inadequate

Like out of order

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Several categories of failureThey may serve as innovation spurs differently

plain incompetence

straightforward impossibilities

lack of knowledge

happy failure

economic trade-offs

thinking traps

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Lack of knowledge

Tacoma Narrows Bridge

John Hancock Tower

Warship Wasa

Millennium Bridge

The Tower of Pisa

torsdag 24 oktober 13

torsdag 24 oktober 13

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Google’s biggest failuresGoogle Wave (May 2009 to August 2010)

Google SearchWiki (November 2008 to March 2010)

Google Audio Ads (January 2006 to February 2009)

Google Video (January 2005 to January 2009) (sing)

Dodgeball (May 2005 to January 2009)

Jaiku (October 2007 to January 2009)

Google Notebook (May 2006 – January 2009)

Google Catalogs (December 2001 to January 2009)

Google Print Ads (November 2006 to January 2009)

Google Page Creator (April 2006 to August 2008)

Google Notebook (May 2006 – January 2009)

Google Answers (April 2002 to November 2006)

Google Health (2008 - 2011)

Google Reader, iGoogle RIP 2013

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Facebook flops

1. Beacon. 2007-2009 track purchases on other sites, then publish that information

2. Social Reader. 2010, “frictionless sharing,” clicked “ok” once and then everyone who knew you on Facebook could see what you were reading.

3. Poke. Facebook sees new app, Snapchat, getting popular. Tries to buy Snapchat. Gets rebuffed. Creates clone of Snapchat called Poke. But people still like Snapchat. Poke is a dud. As Farhad Manjoo points out, when the 800-pound gorilla can’t even stamp out a tiny startup, this is not a good sign.

4. Places. Clone of Foursquare. 2010-2011

5. Find Friends Nearby. 2012, killed within 24 hours.

6. Deals. 2011 killed after four months.

7. Questions. 2010-2012

8. Mail. November 2010, -- November 2011, mocked as a failure.

9. Mobile App Ad Network. Launched last year, Shelved in December.

10. Project Spartan. The buzz on HTML5 started in June 2011. Ten months later, in August 2012, Zuckerberg admitted that betting on HTML5 had been “the biggest mistake we made”

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Several categories of failureThey may serve as innovation spurs differently

plain incompetence

straightforward impossibilities

lack of knowledge

happy failure

economic trade-offs

thinking traps

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Other happy failure

...besides serendipity

Self-defeating future studies

Considering/opting for several alternatives

Planned obsolescense

Security measures (e g, water, fire watch, split pin) {Failure by design}

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Several categories of failureThey may serve as innovation spurs differently

plain incompetence

straightforward impossibilities

lack of knowledge

happy failure

economic trade-offs

thinking traps

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Bathtub curve

All components same life: guarantee (Ford’s kingpin)

Fix rejects

Burn in: discover errors

TQM

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Broadening the scope

de Bono’s elevator hall

Kasumigaseki highriser: mid weakness

Yokohama highriser: computer controlled rebalancing weight

Integrated circuits: routing around misses

balancing yield vs capability

torsdag 24 oktober 13

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Tuning up (small scale) productionLearn from, correct mistakes

Everone may pull the plug/light up

No inventory, JIT

Integrate tasks, no MTM

Reduce/eliminate set-up time

Tailored tooling

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Unavoidable deviations6 ∑

... or, more generally, statistical measures

Match components

Humans too dirty? = clean room/flowbox

Buildings too shaky? = house within a house

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Some of Einstein’s Mistakes1. 1905 Mistake in clock synchronization on which Einstein based special relativity2. 1905 Failure to consider Michelson-Morley experiment3. 1905 Mistake in transverse mass of high-speed particles4. 1905 Multiple mistakes in the mathematics/physics used to calculate liquid viscosity used to deduce molecule size5. 1905 Mistakes in the relationship between thermal radiation and quanta of light6. 1905 Mistake in the first proof of E = mc27. 1906 Mistakes in the second, third, and fourth proofs of E = mc28. 1907 Mistake in the synchronization procedure for accelerated clocks9. 1907 Mistakes in the Principle of Equivalence of gravitation and acceleration10. 1911 Mistake in the first calculation of the bending of light11. 1913 Mistake in the first attempt at a theory of general relativity12. 1914 Mistake in the fifth proof of E = mc213. 1915 Mistake in the Einstein-de Haas experiment14. 1915 Mistakes in several attempts at theories of general relativity15. 1916 Mistake in the interpretation of Mach’s principle16. 1917 Mistake in the introduction of the cosmological constant (the “biggest blunder”)17. 1919 Mistakes in two attempts to modify general relativity18. 1925 Mistakes and more mistakes in the attempts to formulate a unified theory19. 1927 Mistakes in discussions with Bohr on quantum uncertainties20. 1933 Mistakes in interpretation of quantum mechanics (Does God play dice?)21. 1934 Mistake in the sixth proof of E = mc222. 1939 Mistake in the interpretation of the Schwarzschild singularity and gravitational collapse (the “black hole”)23. 1946 Mistake in the seventh proof of E = mc2

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Several categories of failureThey may serve as innovation spurs differently

plain incompetence

straightforward impossibilities

lack of knowledge

happy failure

economic trade-offs

thinking traps

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Thinking trapsConditional probabilistics

Black Swans (Taleb’s turkey)

Low vs high speed thinking

ex. anchoring

ex. caught in investment/sunk cost

ex. ownership bias

ex. confirmation bias

ex. incomplete info

Rules of the thumbtorsdag 24 oktober 13

Intelligent failureFail fast — cheap — early. Go out to fail. Fire, aim, repeat.

Genuine uncertainty – so go reduce it!Set up for obtaining/generating informationCareful planningRiskier to do nothing, or to analyze, than to act and fail

Managed quickly = not too much time between outcome and interpretationLimited cost -- cost containedUnderlying assumptions documented in writingPlan to test the assumptionsRisks of failing understood, to best extent mitigatedCommitments scaled to how understanding increasesMeaning of success defined – opportunities significant

+ Some of what’s learned familiar enough to inform other parts of the business

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Intelligent failures

If possible, start building in format/medium as close to the finished goal as possible: iterate-iterate-iterate.

”Eat dogfood”

ß testing

+Partial failures far more valuable than total breakdowns

Build & try prototypes, mockups and samples

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Failure a teacher1 Check your assumptions

Ask why results feel like a failure

What theory is contradicted?

Maybe the hypothesis failed, NOT the experiment

Or... was it the wrong experiment?

2 Seek Out the IgnorantTalk to people unfamiliar. Explaining in simple terms may help to see in a new light

3 Encourage Diversity

4 Beware of Failure-Blindness

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Idea/failure dynamics1 out of 60 succeeds

59 failures?

Allow for crude trial Time, resources, discretionary funding

= >> 1/60

= Several more than ’60’

Learning

= >>>>1/60torsdag 24 oktober 13

Management measuresGoogle’s 20 %

3M’s recycling of experience, Spencer Silver

60 % formal product launches fail

Ratan Tata’s prize

Reward achievements, both failures and successes

Apple: >80 % failures

IBM: ’we spent X k$ on your training’

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Novel practices?Failure inventory

Failure balance sheet

Failure case learning

Failure report dissemination

ROF?

CFO??

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Open innovation: failures for sale

Innocentive

yet2.com http://marketplace.yet2.com/app/about/home

www.pgconnectdevelop.com

www.ideabounty.com

hwww.premisespremises.com/home.php

www.creativitypool.com

torsdag 24 oktober 13

The quality of failure

AXE because of

Spaghetti software

Convincing -- must act despite crisis

Other example: US constitution

torsdag 24 oktober 13

AXE: flexibility powerMechanical modules (test at home)

New tech generations

Modular software (no spaghetti)

Application modules

Analog --> Digital

Failure avoidance

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Statistics fail: Black Swans1) Avoid Optimization, Learn to Love Redundancy

2) Avoid prediction of remote payoffs

3) Beware the "atypicality" of remote events

4) Time. It takes much, much longer for a times series in the Fourth Quadrant to reveal its property

5) Beware Moral Hazard

6) Metrics. Conventional metrics based on type 1 randomness don't work. Words like "standard deviation" are not stable and does not measure anything

7) Where is the skewness?

8) Do not confuse absence of volatility with absence of risks.

9) Beware presentations of risk numbers.

torsdag 24 oktober 13

An ideal: (Taleb)

Anti-fragility

... failure in a system makes it more sturdy

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Failure

Trial & error

Thus informative

We learn from failures

... but are also (too) often chastened, even punished

A vile word -- mustn’t we learn to love it?

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Cont’d...build upon the learning effect

avoid lethal accumulation of deviations

respect human capabilities

information overload

interaction design

thinking traps

incl. thinking fast/slow

success a great inspirer but lousy teacher: when you succeed you never know how close to failure you are/were

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Dan Dennett: Intuition pumps

Sometimes you don’t just want to risk making mistakes; you actually want to make them – Mistakes is key to progress. Of course there are cases when mistakes cannot be allowed – ask any surgeon or airline pilot. But there are also times when making mistakes is the only way to go…. I often I have to encourage students to cultivate the habit of making mistakes, the best learning opportunities of all.

torsdag 24 oktober 13

Yogi Berra:

When you come to a fork in the road...

... take it!

torsdag 24 oktober 13