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Failure Friday #1 with Dan Ward
Friday, February 7, 2025 • Rosenfeld Community
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Failure Friday #1 with Dan Ward
Speakers: Dan Ward
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Summary

We're trying something new in the Rosenverse: Failure Fridays! One Friday a month you'll have the opportunity to hear a story about something that went very wrong and learn from those mistakes. And let's face it: it's always more fun to learn from someone else's failure than your own! For our first foray into schadenfreude, we're joined by author Dan Ward... Dan Ward’s book LIFT is a playful introduction to flying machines from the late 1800’s and the inspiring people who designed, built, launched, and crashed them. It is also a serious guide to innovation for 21st century problem solvers, and it’s got a lot to say about failure. In this interactive discussion, get introduced to a handful of people who tackled the seemingly impossible challenge of human flight in the decades before the Wrights.  They all failed – and their failures have a lot to teach us about experimentation, collaboration, creativity, persistence, and innovation. Failure Friday's aren't recorded—keep an eye on the Rosenverse and participate in the next one!

Key Insights

  • Failure should be defined as an outcome where effort does not produce the desired result, not as a reflection of identity or blame.

  • Early aviation pioneers made breakthroughs by systematically studying failures and learning from them.

  • Octave Chanute’s 1894 book aggregated 400 years of failed flight experiments, identifying dead ends and promising paths.

  • Geopolitical rivalry between French and German engineers hindered data sharing and slowed aviation progress.

  • The Wright siblings’ success was accelerated by leveraging prior documented failures and focusing on stable, static wings.

  • Dan’s team at Mitre created a practice called failure cake to destigmatize failure and build psychological safety.

  • Failure cake celebrates the attempt and boldness, not failure itself, incentivizing risk-taking without punishment.

  • Agile and usability testing cultures support iteration and learning, helping organizations become less risk-averse.

  • Clear definitions of success and impact upfront help teams understand what constitutes failure or success.

  • Language around failure needs to be adapted thoughtfully in different contexts to encourage learning and reduce fear.

Notable Quotes

"Failure is when effort did not produce the desired result, not an identity."

"I may have failed, but I am not a failure."

"The Wright siblings had a sister, Catherine, who was a full participant and should also be remembered."

"We study failure without blame; this is the path to progress."

"Failure cake helped us eat our feelings and provided comfort during hard moments."

"The worst thing that could happen is we get cake — this encourages boldness."

"We don’t celebrate failure; we celebrate the attempt and risk-taking."

"We do experiments to learn, and if we learn something, then it’s a successful experiment."

"Innovation is novelty with impact — three words to remember."

"Failure is only the beginning."

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