"Failculture": a method for failing and learning to innovate

With this discovery and my desire to keep studying, I stepped away from journalism and decided to start researching a topic that looks dark from the side of success, but is a truly normal and human one. Reading the success stories of renowned entrepreneurs, innovators, inventors and scientists, I realized that all of them go through a process of failures before reaching the final result. And that, however unpleasant that process may be, it is necessary to reach a goal. I also understood that society had loaded success with something very powerful that wasn't really there once you arrived. And that we had loaded failure with something very heavy that wasn't quite true either.

Now, how important is it to fail? The sooner the better? When we start learning to walk at an early age, we don't do it without first falling dozens or hundreds of times. Failure is part of our DNA and it shows in childhood. Early on, it's important to fail at things related to what we are looking for and that bring learning. The higher you raise the bar, the more you risk, the more chances you have of failing, but that will bring you knowledge to apply to the next project.

As we grow up, society no longer encourages us to fail in order to keep learning, especially once we enter the job market. The status quo leads us to forget all the failure-powered learning processes we had in childhood. We forget experimentation, where failure doesn't exist because we don't know the real result for certain. In those moments of exploration, there are situations where the result isn't what you expected, but it is far from a failure. In the end, it's a result, and from there you start measuring or moving.

If we look at Elon Musk and what he does with his companies, we see him take risks with Tesla, with Neuralink, with SpaceX, and he has undoubtedly accumulated failures in each of them, but when he achieves one of the goals, like bringing one of his rockets back, he has made an evolutionary leap. It's a clear example of how, in the entrepreneurial world, we must promote a culture of failing in order to innovate and grow.

I understand evolution as small leaps, and between those leaps there is something I call "failvolution": the experimentation and failures that make you rethink and act toward the next small evolutionary leap. For the famous "eureka moment" to appear, you had to go through many stages of failvolution. From the outside, success looks overnight. What many don't see are all the failures of the past.

"Failculture", a method for failing and learning to innovate and lead that I developed with my team, involves imagining everything that could work against your project. But once the project gets going, the critical points you didn't imagine start to appear. In the next iteration of the project, you already account for those surprises.

What matters is that the fear of failure doesn't stop us. Understanding it as part of the process, and daring to do the things that move us. Turning "what if" into "what happened?", and knowing we can always go back.