I’ve always been interested in how innovation happens and how problem-solving often leads to success. There has been a lot of research completed about learning from failure in order to eventually turn a creative approach into a success. We all know the stories about Walt Disney (we are still running articles about that company’s innovations), Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, and as far back as Thomas Edison. For all of these people, multiple failures—often significant failures—eventually led to something innovative and successful. 

In order for a company to be innovative, for a company to branch out and do more with their products and services, even to find new avenues for sales, some measure of failure must happen. But here’s the rub: how do you know when to stop and when to continue forward? How do you know when it’s just not the right time for the idea, or the move into a new market, or the acceptance for a new approach? 

You don’t.

But at the same time, if you never break out from the crowd, you will never be able to offer something innovative or unique. Sometimes a result may even look like a failure at first but with some consistency will turn into a success. It’s a fact that people generally like to live in some amount of equilibrium, where change is minimal. This means that new ideas can be shut down before they get the chance to take off. But an engineer can't innovate without the freedom to experiment and—yes—fail; by giving your engineers the space to fail, you also allow more space for innovation, which can eventually carry your company to the forefront of your industry, rather than trailing behind or being average. 

If you’re an engineering manager, this means that you must protect your engineering staff. To be innovative, you have to present a safe and psychologically secure environment for them to try new approaches. Then you have to help your team learn from their failures while providing a positive memory of the experience—which makes them even more able to innovate further.

Today, the most successful endeavors are a result of past failures, where the people and company learned from mistakes in order to clear a better path forward.