The Wharton School has posted an interview with Schoemaker on its site (you can see the video below). Knowledge@Wharton is also conducting a "Brilliant Mistakes Contest" if you'd like to share your story.
Here are some choice quotes:
A brilliant mistake is an action you take or a prediction you make that turns out to be wrong. This hurts you initially, but then it also opens up new vistas, and it may result in innovation and discovery. You start to see the world -- or yourself -- differently. For example: You get fired from a job unexpectedly and it prompts a lot of learning. Or you enter a new market or a new technology, and initially, many things don't work out well, but the benefits eventually make that "mistake" more than compensate for its cost....
You have to look at the conditions that favor these brilliant kinds of mistakes. If there is a lot of uncertainty, and the world has changed on you and your old ways of thinking are not quite the right ones, then you have to create more space to discover new approaches....
Very few people want to say they favor mistakes. However, I was also struck [by the fact] that many very successful people have not only a tolerant approach to mistakes, in music or in sports, but they actually embrace them, to some extent. They have an intuitive sense that these mistakes are, as James Joyce put it, "portals of discovery." These are new venues, new avenues for having insights that otherwise you wouldn't get. That's the key: The mistake is an expensive way to get to new insight. But if that is the only way to get to that insight, it may still be worth pursuing.
I've posted my "brilliant mistake" here.
Related post: Benefiting from deliberate mistakes
No comments:
Post a Comment