If you're aiming to innovate, failure along the way is a given. But can you fail better?
Whether you're rolling out a new product from a city-view office or rolling up your sleeves to deliver a social service in the field, learning why and how to embrace failure can help you do better, faster. Smart leaders, entrepreneurs, and change agents design their innovation projects with a key idea in mind: ensure that every failure is maximally useful.
In Fail Better, Anjali Sastry and Kara Penn show how to create the conditions, culture, and habits to systematically, ruthlessly, and quickly figure out what works, in three steps: 1. Launch every innovation project with the right groundwork 2. Build and refine ideas and products through iterative action 3. Identify and embed the learning
Fail Better teaches you how to design your efforts to test the boundaries of your thinking, explore crucial interdependencies, and find the factors that can shift results from just acceptable to groundbreaking-or even world-changing. Practical instructions intertwined with compelling real-world examples show you how to: • Make predictions and map system relationships ahead of time so you can better assess results • Establish how much failure you can afford • Prioritize project activities for disconfirmation and iteration • Learn from every action step by collecting and examining the right data • Support efficient, productive habits to link action and reflection • Distill, share, and embed the lessons from every success and failure
You may be a Fortune 500 manager, scrappy start-up innovator, social impact visionary, or simply leading your own small project. If you aim to break through without breaking the bank-or ruining your reputation-this book is for you.
"In corporations, governments, academic organizations, and nonprofits, there is a desperate need for leaders willing to boldly experiment, thoughtfully learn from failures, and refocus their efforts-yet few actually do. In this important book, Sastry and Penn show us how."
Sachin H. Jain, Lecturer, Department of Health Care Policy, Harvard Medical School
"Fail Better is a brilliant antidote to most management thinking. You are going to fail. The question is: Can you fail better, learn from your mistakes, and get closer to where you need to be? If you're committed to improving health care, or passionate about the economic development in poorer countries-or if you've ever tried anything, really-this is a must-read."
Simon Johnson, coauthor, 13 Bankers and White House Burning
