Daily Inspiration: “…incremental innovation? A continuous series of mistakes…”

“The best definition of incremental innovation? A continuous series of mistakes, each of them part of a non-stop learning opportunity!” -Futurist Jim Carroll

You won’t always get it right the first time.

In fact, it might take you many times before you figure out the solution to your problem.

As in – ‘it’s learning by doing!’ It’s not a good thing to get caught in an ‘innovation rut’ – making excuses as to why you should not be trying to do new things.

But it should be perfectly acceptable, and even desirable – to try to do those new things and make mistakes along the way. That’s because every mistake that you make will be a learning experience that you can use for insight on your next attempt.

That’s where my concept of ‘experiential capital’ comes in, something I’ve been talking about on stage since 2003.

The idea is that in this high velocity economy of relentless change, a regular series of cumulative experiences – your ‘experience capital’ might become as equally important as the financial capital that you have in helping you to adapt.

With that it mind, the more capital you have, the better positioned you are for the future!

I’m always very observant of what the audience is doing and how they are reacting while I’m on stage, and I can see pens going to paper quickly as they jot down this phrase. Clearly, it is striking a chord!

And so, as the saying goes : “fail early, fail often, fail fast.” Because sometimes, the more you fail, the better positioned you are to figure out what to do next!