Fail Better: Design Smart Mistakes and Succeed Sooner

Fail Better: Design Smart Mistakes and Succeed Sooner

By Anjali Sastry and Kara Penn

If you're aiming to innovate, failure along the way is a given. But can you fail better. Whether you're rolling out a new product from a city-view office or rolling up your sleeves to deliver a social service in the field, learning why and how to embrace failure can help you do better, faster. Smart leaders, entrepreneurs, and change agents design their innovation projects with a key idea in mind: ensure that every failure is maximally useful.

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Book Information

Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
Publish Date: 11/04/2014
Pages: 336
ISBN-13: 9781422193440
ISBN-10: 1422193446
Language: English

What We're Saying

November 14, 2014

The authors of Fail Better take a popular subject a bit further by offering a methodology for constructing mistakes. READ FULL DESCRIPTION

November 11, 2014

Fail Better

By Porchlight

While failure in business is a given–it can also lead to success with the right mindset and approach. READ FULL DESCRIPTION

Full Description

If you're aiming to innovate, failure along the way is a given. But can you fail better? Whether you're rolling out a new product from a city-view office or rolling up your sleeves to deliver a social service in the field, learning why and how to embrace failure can help you do better, faster. Smart leaders, entrepreneurs, and change agents design their innovation projects with a key idea in mind: ensure that every failure is maximally useful. In Fail Better, Anjali Sastry and Kara Penn show how to create the conditions, culture, and habits to systematically, ruthlessly, and quickly figure out what works, in three steps:
1. Launch every innovation project with the right groundwork
2. Build and refine ideas and products through iterative action
3. Identify and embed the learning Fail Better teaches you how to design your efforts to test the boundaries of your thinking, explore crucial interdependencies, and find the factors that can shift results from just acceptable to groundbreaking--or even world-changing. Practical instructions intertwined with compelling real-world examples show you how to:
- Make predictions and map system relationships ahead of time so you can better assess results
- Establish how much failure you can afford
- Prioritize project activities for disconfirmation and iteration
- Learn from every action step by collecting and examining the right data
- Support efficient, productive habits to link action and reflection
- Distill, share, and embed the lessons from every success and failure You may be a Fortune 500 manager, scrappy start-up innovator, social impact visionary, or simply leading your own small project. If you aim to break through without breaking the bank--or ruining your reputation--this book is for you.

About the Authors

Anjali Sastry is senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management and lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Her research investigates global health delivery and management, applying systems thinking and practical, business-based approaches in low-resource settings.

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Anjali Sastry is senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management and lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Her research investigates global health delivery and management, applying systems thinking and practical, business-based approaches in low-resource settings.

Learn More

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