I met Marc Randolph, CEO of Netflix, several years ago at the Front End of Innovation Conference in Boston. After three days mixing with ‘the tribe’, immersed in innovation, I had the courage to believe anything was possible.
On the final day of the conference, the emcee suggested to attendees that if they weren’t achieving what they believed to be essential in order to live an effective life, they should consider leaving their organisation. I could not have agreed more and hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Marc Randolph gave the most honest and open response to the ‘elephant in the room’ question. This is the question that sits in every entrepreneur’s stomach and in every ideation and innovation session. How do you know if it’s going to work?
The truth is, we never know. Not for sure. But here’s what you need if you want to find out:
1. Tolerance for risk
2. An idea. This idea doesn’t even have to be original. It just has to improve things.
3. Confidence to try it out.
At the beginning of the innovation journey, according to Randolph, “nobody knows anything”. All ideas don’t make it. Randolph had one idea that made it and six others that didn’t. Figures quoted often suggest the same ratios between success and failure.
If you want to ‘make it’ you have to have great ideas and be prepared to iterate and test and pivot and take a chance and be resilient and be able to get back up when you get knocked down. You have to believe that it’s possible.
Just like Jennifer Holland believes in Throat Scope. You can read her story in Celebrating Success One Failure at a Time. Just like Justin Hales believes in Camplify. And just like Per Kristiansen believes in Lego Serious Play - who by the way I also met at the conference and is one of the entrepreneurs interviewed in the book.
Randolph’s reaction when Blockbuster Video refused to buy them for the $50million they were in debt for was, “We just have to kick their ass”. And that’s exactly what Netflix did.
We are doomed to fail because we are immersed in innovation. Whether you are an entrepreneur or an intrapreneur, you are probably solving problems in your head every minute of every day. That means you are more than likely coming up with solutions to those problems every minute of every day.
Guaranteed they will not all work or be accepted. Failure. Constant. Failure.
But with each failure we learn something. And with each learning, we are closer to success. If you don’t give it a go, how will you ever know?
Some years later I was fortunate that Marc Randolph agreed to write the forward to my book Celebrating Success One Failure at a Time. There is now a short, self-paced course that goes with the book. I hope it helps you redefine what you consider failure and success to be. We need to change the definitions and charge up the conversations.
#innovation #success #failure #leadership #noperfectplaybook
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At the beginning of the innovation journey, nobody knows anything.
Marc Randolph
At the beginning of the innovation journey, nobody knows anything.
Marc Randolph
