The Kintsugi Effect in the Innovation Process

I've been recently thinking about this fear to do something wrong (to fail) that traps us when trying something new at any point in life, in both personal and professional dimensions.

This fear is a kind of natural thing. I mean, it's inherent to the fact of living, based on negative past experiences or the lack of a positive reference of the result of the action we're about to do. Fear is a consequence of uncertainty. 

There's a saying in Spain about humans being the only animal that stumbles twice on the same stone. And well, that's because we have not paid the right attention to that stone in our way the first time, right?

"Failure" has widely been assumed as a scar in someone's reputation. Something to be removed, hide, or disregard as if had never happened. We need to start banishing this negative thoughts about failure.

Learning from failure

 "Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn" (John Maxwell)

The scientific method is indeed the peak on learning from "failure", as it's the failure itself what researchers are looking for through their experiments. Learning, by the validation or the falsifiability of the formulated hypothesis.

Failure has historically led to great innovations worldwide. As long as the innovators did not stopped at the first attempt to get the original purpose of their creation.

When John Pemberton invented the Coca-Cola, he thought he was creating some sort of medicine, which could be somehow good to cure some kinds of addictions. It was not long after that Pemberton discovered that his invention's big business opportunity was more oriented outside the pharmacy industry.

When Pfizer's scientists invented the blue pill, their original intention was to cure high blood pressure, but some unexpected side effects on men's vigor led them to re-think their business case. [1]

The art of Innovation

Innovation has a dual meaning. 1) On one hand we talk about a way; a process to change, transform or evolve a culture into something new which nurtures and facilitates new ways of thinking. 2) On the other hand we talk about the objective itself; the output of the process in the shape of something which is unique or applied in a singular way. [2]

1) Innovation as a process can be treated like an artistic discipline. It is basically a sum of subjective perceptions in terms of business performance, newness and knowledge connections. Because innovation happens when creativity and business meet in an guided way.

Innovation occurs when art and science meet each other. It is required for companies to strengthen the creative skills of their employees, through a supporting process which develops experimentation, testing and validation. [3]

2) Innovation as an end, is a full piece of art. Just like music, painting or a novel, is indeed a way to solve a problem in a creative way to solve the lack of sound - for instance - which led Beethoven to build a wide repertoire of masterpieces. [4] A creative problem solving discipline.

For some people, there’s no differentiation between finding something new in paint and finding something technologically. (Sarah Lewis)

The Kintsugi effect 

Kintsugi (金継ぎ) (Japanese for golden joinery)[5] is a Japanese art consisting on repairing broken pottery in a shocking way (at least shocking for western cultures...) by treating the breakage as part of the story of the item itself.

Kintsugi does not pretend to hide the effects of the smash but to highlight the fissures by filling them with gold, silver or platinum, making the crack evident. While keeping the item useful again and beautiful somehow.

Kintsugi shows how nothing should be discarted just because it is broken

In many ways in life – and business is not an exception – we tend to mitigate the visibility of our defects (as with an "Instagram filter”). We must change our minds towards failure acceptance in order to obtain the benefits of watching and learning from the fact of having failed. 

By highlighting the mistakes done in the past, analysing them carefully, we'll learn how to correct our present, to build a better future for us. We'll mitigate the fear to do something new, as we will be sure we are doing it better than the previous time.

"Nothing fails like success when you rely on it too much” (Arnold Toynbee) [6]

A strong track on what went wrong in your personal and professional life, provides a clear vision on what to do to avoid failing again.

By finding the beauty of failure, innovation will thrive naturally.

[1] Failure is the Mother of Innovation

[2] Is Innovation a Buzzword?

[3] Is Innovation an Art or a Science?

[4] The Underappreciated Ties Between Art And Innovation

[5] Wikipedia: Kintsugi

[6] Write a Failure Resume to Learn What Makes You Succeed