Talk by Mr. Georg Todtenbier / M.N. Barry / M10110801

Georg’s speech (Cultivating Failure: Process in product design) was truly inspirational, especially for design students. Like he said failure is rejected in Asian societies, which is also the case in educational institutions. There is nothing wrong with setting high standards for students but I think schools need to accept “failure” as part of the learning process. This will particularly helpful for students in creative fields such as design. There is no short cut to creativity, so students should be encouraged to fail as much as possible to bring out the creativity in them. He used Thomas Edison as an example here, who failed 1000 times before succeeding with the incandescent light bulb. He also highlighted how big companies such as Apple have failed in the past, before eventually becoming successful. Apple launched a similar product to the ipad in 1993, called Newton, which flopped then but when the ipad was launched in 2010, it became a big success in the market, and was selected by Time Magazine as one of the 50 Best Inventions of the Year 2010. Failure is not bad as long as we learn from it.

Another great advice from him was to “steal”, improve, and find inspiration in our surroundings. Here he also mentioned how Edison “stole” the light bulb idea from Joseph Swan, who also “stole” it from Humphry Davy. And also how Apple “stole” from the Xerox to create the Macintosh computer. The key here is not to “steal” but to improve on something or get inspired.  

Georg’s final piece of advice was to try and embrace “failure” – Fail, Improve, and Perfect. Many failures lead to success.
Below is a link to a very nice video by IDEO founder, David Kelly, on how to build your creative confidence.
http://www.ted.com/talks/david_kelley_how_to_build_your_creative_confidence.html