The Failure Files: Perspectives on Failure

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Many of us are afraid of failure and spend our lives trying to avoid it. But society’s most high achieving figures would all recognise that failure has been an integral part of their success. The premise that failure should be considered a vital opportunity for learning and innovation is the inspiration behind the RSA’s Glory of Failure project. As part of this project, leading thinkers and practitioners from the fields of project and risk management, reflective practice, business, education, government policy-making, social history and psychology have come together to re-evaluate the concept of failure. The writers of The Failure Files explore different aspects of the ‘F word’ as they relate to their areas of expertise. These include: turning ‘learned helplessness’ into ‘learned optimism’, considering how the public perception of failure in the media can contribute to risk-averse and stagnated public services, and learning lessons from successful entrepreneurs, who - like explorers, inventors and artists - are all able to make failure into a learning process.
The Failure Files is a call to bring discussion of failure into the public sphere, and to open up debate about how to build dynamic responses to failure into our society, businesses and personal lives.