Free to fail?
Great story about failure “Free To Fail – Forbes.com.” BorgWarner, an auto supplier, provides seed capital to internal champions to pursue innovative projects.
The article describes how one engineer spent two and a half years and $2M working on a new power system — but it turned out that he was wrong about the market demand.
So what happened? Did he get fired? De-moted? Sidelined?
No. He received a personal note from the CEO — thanking him for his risk taking initiative.
Wow. That kind of attitude towards failure is rare inside most companies. It does exist in places like Silicon Valley, where enterpreneurs are free to start again after a “failed” venture. Within established companies, however, significant forces are at work to stiffle innovation — the biggest perhaps is an unwillingness to accept failure. Like most issues of culture, the tone has to be set at the top — and in this case the BorgWarner CEO Timothy Manganello did just that — making it clear that smart risk taking is critical to the company’s future. Note that this process of risk taking is supported by an strategy board that systematically reviews the progress of these ideas.
Let’s face it — lots of new ideas don’t work out for a whole host of reasons. But what kind of culture do you want to cultivate within your company?
