Play and Failure

The average four-year-old spends forty percent of their playtime doing constructive play, think wood blocks! They try to build a taller tower before it collapses. You could label each collapse a failure, but I doubt that would faze the four-year-old much. Each structure is a new learning opportunity to try something else. Such a fun and elegant way to learn by failures.

As we grow older, failure is less elegant. It can be a setback, big or small, and can even be demoralizing. Let’s face it, nobody really likes to fail. Reframing failure and how to make it a learning experience is easy to talk about, but let me share a personal example.

One of my earlier toy inventions was the "Grand Slam Bubble Bat." The picture on the left shows me working on the prototype in my first Play Lab space, a whopping two-hundred square feet. The inside of the bat had a motor and a bubble-making mechanism. When you pressed a button on the bat handle, bubbles would magically come out of the end of the bat. The child would then swing at the bubbles bursting them while getting tons of swinging practice.

So fast forward to a pitch meeting where I’m excited to share my invention. I’m at a major toy company in a conference room, across from me are half a dozen executives in very nice outfits. I pull out the bat to explain how it works, then proceed to demonstrate it which I’m convinced will be a winner. I’m holding the bat, and I push the button on the handle, but nothing happens. I can hear the motor whirring, but no bubbles are coming out. Argh, I tap the bat on the conference room table, thinking maybe some of the bubble solution gunked up the mechanism, but still no luck. My next move was to swing the bat, thinking that might get it working, but still no luck! In fact, what did happen was the bubble solution came flying out of the bat and hit every executive's outfit. What a failure! What did I learn? I learned how to apologize profusely and to handwrite apologies notes. I was invited back to that company and went on to license many successful toy inventions. That failure stung, but for me, it resulted in my rule to always get invited back to try again. And with a happy ending, I eventually sold the concept, but to a different company that didn’t cause any dry cleaning bills.