"Museum of Failure" and other highlights from the Innovation Roundtable
Greetings from Copenhagen! I am here for the Innovation Roundtable Summit—the largest gathering of corporate innovation executives in the world.
Mark Coopersmith selfie at Innovation Roundtable Summit 2019
I just delivered a keynote address on the closing of Day 1, giving an updated take on “The Other ‘F’ Word.”
On Day 2 I did a deeper dive into that topic, and deconstructed the Failure Value Cycle (from my book).
On Day 3 I led a session on “Three Keys to Corporate Entrepreneurship,” where I take core entrepreneurial practices and adapt them to work in large enterprises.
Earlier in my career I was a caasorporate entrepreneur at Sony (I was an executive vice president there) and at other F500 enterprises, and I bring those experiences to bear directly on this topic, along with plenty of other real-world examples.
My approach to launching new ventures and initiatives inside large enterprises includes investigating and providing tools in the areas of:
(1) Strategic Alignment
(2) Effective Entrepreneurial Execution
(3) Stakeholder Management
In fact, you can download both of the worksheets/workbooks I developed on these topics below:
failure value cycle graphic from innovation roundtable summit
Failure Value Cycle from The Other "F" Word: How Smart Leaders, Teams, and Entrepreneurs Put Failure to Work
When my coauthor John Danner and I released our book, The Other “F” Word: How Smart Leaders, Teams, and Entrepreneurs Put Failure to Work in 2015, I thought we would have two or, at most, three years of interest in our book and the related frameworks for cultivating a more productive relationship with failure and accelerate innovation and growth.
However, with new examples being created every day, the topic of failure continues to generate interest at home in Berkeley and the Silicon Valley, as well as abroad.
Current illustrations I included in in my address and workshop ranged from Boeing to WeWork to more positive examples.
While I was here, I also had the good fortune to meet Dr. Samuel West, founder of the Museum of Failure.
Dr. Samuel West and Mark Coopersmith
Dr. Samuel West, founder of the Museum of Failure (left) and Mark Coopersmith (right)
His museum shows that “For every mega-success like the Apple iPhone, VCR and Ford Mustang, there’s a couple of Newtons, Betamaxes and Edsels that crashed and burned before them.”
picture of kodak's first digital camera at the museum of failure
Kodak’s first digital camera (exhibit from the Museum of Failure)
The Museum of Failure hopes to convey that the acceptance of failure is necessary in order for innovation and progress to truly succeed—a message I can get behind!
In case you missed them, here are a few recent posts from my blog on the topics of innovation and failure:
