Failure is an option – if you learn from it

Scientists, researchers and entrepreneurs, even curious tinkerers, we have all been there. Head in hands, wondering just how the experiment went wrong. If we stopped there, threw our hands up in the air and accepted defeat, we wouldn’t have many of the innovations commonplace in society today, like penicillin for example. 

Instead, the curious, scientific mind compels us not to give up, but to understand why or how something happened. To work through the issue and come up with a new design or a telling adjustment that propels us further along the innovation journey. 

I have certainly been through this myself. When developing a dishwasher product, my sample turned cloudy when it wasn’t meant to. It took a moment for me to realise that I had added my ingredients in the wrong order. I had been a bit rushed, a bit lazy. But I learned it was important to follow this recipe in that order. 

In science and innovation there will be setbacks and failures. However, it’s what you learn from those moments – and how you respond – that is most important in getting your product to market.

Learning from unexpected results

Take Post-it notes for example. Can you imagine a brainstorming meeting without them? Originally, scientists at 3M were looking to develop strong adhesives, but one prototype mix didn’t bond tightly or permanently. It was the persistence of someone in their team that these properties could be useful which led to this ​“failure” becoming a revolutionary communication success. 

In the discovery phase of research, unexpected results are not always a failure. The observation of something unexpected can also provide opportunity. Trial and error are part and parcel of the continuous process of science and innovation, which can be incredibly frustrating but also extremely rewarding. 

Some ideas aren’t destined to work

However, persistence in the face of mounting evidence that your idea is not working can also be a trap. 

Earlier in my career, I was taught a very strong lesson: Don’t ever fall in love with your solution, fall in love with the problem you’re trying to solve. That’s what matters. 

We are human and we get attached to our ideas – they become our babies and we get overly protective of them. We are passionate and want them to be successful. But ultimately, you may need a different solution to the one you thought you had to fix this problem. So, letting go of a failed experiment, idea or product for this reason, and concentrating on solving the problem, is a great thing. Writers somewhat morbidly call it ​“killing your darlings”. Telling someone ​“their baby is ugly” is the hard part when working with others to help them. They might not want to hear it, but it is a necessary step when successfully bringing an innovation or product to market. 

Two heads are better than one

Science and innovation can be highly competitive environments, but they also benefit from collaboration. Just look at how the world’s scientists and innovators came together during the COVID-19 pandemic: sharing key data and developing rapid new tests, and quickly developing nascent vaccine technology.

Whether a team is based in the same location or across the globe, or even different teams working on different aspects of the same problem, collaboration is enhanced through transparent and open communication.

Good communication also means managing expectations within the team or wider company, whether to upper management or external groups. It’s particularly important when you’re struggling to find a way forward with an experiment or needing someone else’s input to help move on from an idea that isn’t working.

Early in my career, I was part of a team developing a product to clean water, but close to launch we got an unexpected result. The solution was challenging but as scientists it was what we trained to work on so was within our expertise and we fixed it relatively quickly. That’s the technical or scientific collaboration part. 

However, the real problem was not managing the science but the expectations of senior leaders. Controlling the communication to ensure people didn’t overreact or over scrutinise the team’s plans allowed them to deliver the technical fix they were working on. 

My biggest takeaway from this incident was that, sometimes, the way you communicate a technical problem is a bigger issue than the problem itself. For scientists and innovators, scaling up a solution relies not only on overcoming the problems in the lab or manufacturing line, but how you communicate that challenge to those around you until you reach a successful resolution or implement the technical fix. 

How CPI's culture of learning brings products to market

Fundamentally, our mission at CPI is to bridge the ​‘valley of death’ and help translate academic excellence and innovation potential into commercialisable products that benefit people and the planet. 

We help with the essential, nitty-gritty work of design, formulation, testing and problem solving to help entrepreneurs and SMEs get through initial development, so their product is ready for scale up, commercialisation and ultimately market launch. 

To successfully support our mission, we cannot let what we’ve learned from past failures go to waste. We do this by recruiting skilled scientists and engineers, some of whom are relatively advanced in their career and have already learned from years’ worth of mistakes or failures. They know not to repeat their past mistakes in future projects. 

We also have energetic early-stage researchers and engineers who will immediately be given the latitude to work on collaborative research and development projects that carry a high risk of not working. Crucially, they also have a very high learning potential for the person and the project overall. 

Our researchers are sharing, learning, and training each other – passing insights on to the next generation. This means their failures are low-impact in terms of cost and time, but high-value, by learning things that can be reapplied. This culture also helps us act as a conduit for learning for the academic groups, SMEs, and large corporations we support. 

As James Dyson said: ​“Failures are just problems that have yet to be solved”.