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Should Failure Be Rewarded To Spur Innovation?

Posted by Soulskill on from the you-ruined-all-the-backups-here-is-20-bucks dept.

Lucas123 writes "Paper products maker Kimberly-Clark drove the morale of its IT infrastructure group into the ground after massive firings and outsourcing. When they hired a new VP of Infrastructure four years later to turn things around, he implemented a program to spur innovation. The VP took a venture capitalist approach where any employee could submit an idea and if accepted, make a pitch in 30 minutes or less. If the idea had merit, it received first, then second rounds of funding. If not, the employee's idea still got lauded on the company's internal Sharepoint site. As he puts it, 'Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. It's about what we learn from the failure. Not the failure itself. We celebrate that learning.'"

3 of 146 comments (clear)

  1. The Beatings Will Continue... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Until Morale Improves.

  2. Better phrasing by mseeger · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What they don't do is "rewarding failure". They hand out incentives for trying. Subtle differences between those two....

  3. Risk some capital by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Upper management tends to consider itself enlightened, whereas tech are just low-level functionaries who could not possibly grasp the basics of budgeting and return on investment. They never trust, even their most senior and proven people, to come up with ideas which would benefit the company in the long run. If management can't see the benefit themselves, then there is no benefit and money should not be spent.

    However, technicians have an important perspective on the company's needs which can only come from having your head down in the trenches. They see opportunities for gain that upper management cannot see, and will never see, despite their importance and reality. Furthermore, some of their technical agendas can't directly translate to numbers despite their real value.

    Therefore, truly enlightened upper management will accept a measure of risk, devoting some development bandwidth to the ideas being put forth by their technicians, even though management doesn't quite understand the value. Its true that some of that money might get wasted, but the gains will more than offset the costs.

    Unfortunately, such an attitude requires a level of respect and humility not generally found in corporate executives.