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從失敗中尋找好創意
Better Ideas Through Failure
To pitch a prospective client for her ad agency, Amanda Zolten knew she a had to take a risk. But the client's product -- kitty litter -- posed a unique challenge.
阿曼達•佐爾坦（Amanda Zolten）明白，為了給她的廣告公司搞定這個潛在客戶，必須得冒點風險。但客戶的產品的確是個不同尋常挑戰。這種產品是貓砂。
Lucy Belle, Ms. Zolten's cat, furnished the answer.
佐爾坦的貓，美人露西（Lucy Belle），給出了答案。
Before she and her team met with six of the company's executives, Ms. Zolten buried Lucy Belle's mess in a box of the company's litter and pushed it under the conference-room table. No one noticed until Ms. Zolten pointed it out -- and the fact that no one had smelled it.
在佐爾坦和她的團隊與該公司的六位高管見面之前，她將美人露西的糞便埋在盛著該公司的貓砂的盒子里，并把盒子推到了會議室桌子底下。在佐爾坦說出來之前，沒有人注意到它。事實是，誰也沒有聞到它的味道。
Shocked, several executives pushed back from the table. Two left the room. After a pause, those who remained started laughing, says Ms. Zolten, a senior vice president with Grey New York. 'We achieved what we hoped, which was creating a memorable experience,' she says. 有幾位高管在震驚之下推開了椅子，還有兩個人離開了會議室。廣告公司 Grey New York的高級深副總裁佐爾坦說，過了一會兒，留下來的人開始大笑。我們的目的達到了，我們就是要創造一次令人難忘的經歷。
She won't know for a few weeks whether Grey won the business. But her boss, Tor Myhren, has already named Ms. Zolten the winner of his first quarterly 'Heroic Failure' award -- for taking a big, edgy risk.
在接下來的幾個星期之內，她不會知道Grey New York能否拿下這筆生意。但她的老板托爾•邁倫（Tor Myhren）已經宣布佐爾坦為他的首個季度“英勇失敗”獎得主，理由是她很機智地冒了一次很大的風險。
Amid worries that we are becoming less innovative, some companies are rewarding employees for their mistakes or questionable risks. The tactic is rooted in research showing that innovations are often accompanied by a high rate of failure.
阿曼達•佐爾坦從她所在的一家紐約廣告公司的老板手中接過“英勇失敗”獎杯。由于擔心人們不再那么銳意創新，有些公司對犯錯或冒可疑風險的員工進行獎勵。有一項研究表明，創新往往與高失敗率相伴而行。這些公司的這種舉措就是根據這項研究做出的。
'Failure, and how companies deal with failure, is a very big part of innovation,' says Judy Estrin of Menlo Park, Calif., a founder of seven high-tech companies and author of a book on innovation. Failures caused by sloppiness or laziness are bad. But 'if employees try something that was worth trying and fail, and if they are open about it, and if they learn from that failure, that is a good thing.'
加利福尼亞州門羅公園（Menlo Park）的朱迪•埃斯特林（Judy Estrin）說，失敗，以及公司如何應對失敗，是創新的重要組成部分。她是七家高科技公司的創始人，還寫過一本關于創新的書。因馬虎或懶惰導致的失敗是壞事。但如果員工嘗試了某種值得嘗試的事并失敗了，但是他們能坦誠面對，并從失敗中吸取教訓，那么這就是件好事。
Grey's Mr. Myhren recently started handing out the 'Heroic Failure' award because he was worried that fast growth at the agency, a unit of WPP's Grey Group in New York, was making employees 'a little more conservative, maybe a little slower,' he says. Creator of E*Trade's talking-baby ads, Grey New York has more than doubled to 900 employees since 2008.
Grey New York的老板邁倫最近才開始頒發“英勇失敗”獎，因為他擔心該廣告公司（WPP集團在紐約的葛瑞集團(Grey Group)的分支機構）的快速增長讓員工變得有點保守，甚至還有些遲鈍。自2008年以來，Grey New York公司的員工數已經翻了一倍還多，達到了900人。網絡券商E*Trade有名的“可愛的寶寶”系列廣告就出自這家公司的手筆。
'I thought rewarding a little risk-taking was potentially an answer,' Mr. Myhren says. The award is for ideas that are 'edgier or riskier, or new and totally unproven,' he says.
邁倫說，我認為對冒點風險的行為進行獎勵可能是個辦法。按他的說法，這個獎是頒給那些更前衛或更冒險、新鮮而完全未經證實的點子的。
Mr. Myhren acknowledges that Ms. Zolten's prank could have gotten his eight-member team 'kicked out of the room and told never to come back.' He adds, 'There was enough chaos in the room that we weren't sure whether it was a good or bad thing.' Nevertheless, he calls the idea 'absolutely brilliant' and deserving of the garish two-foot-tall 'Heroic Failure' trophy. Regardless of how it turns out, he says, 'we're proud that we had that idea.'
邁倫承認，佐爾坦近乎惡作劇的行為可能會讓他的8人團隊被踢出會議室，而且永遠被拒之門外。他還說，會議室里一片混亂，我們也不知道這是件好事還是件壞事。盡管如此，他還是夸獎這個主意絕妙無比，配得上2英尺高、光彩奪目的“英勇失敗”獎杯。不管結果如何，我們都為想出這個點子而自豪，他說。
Many people succeed at producing innovations because they churn out a very large number of ideas, both good and bad, says Dean Keith Simonton, a psychology professor at the University of California, Davis. 'The most successful people tend to be those with the most failures,' says Dr. Simonton, author of more than 500 studies and articles and 12 books on creativity and innovation.
美國加利福尼亞大學戴維斯分校（University of California, Davis）的心理學教授迪安•基斯•西蒙頓（Dean Keith Simonton）說，很多人的創新之所以能成功，是因為他們能夠產生大量的點子，包括好點子和壞點子。西蒙頓博士說，最成功的人往往是那些失敗最多的人。他撰寫了500多篇研究論文，還出版了12本關于創造力和創新的專著。
Extracting lessons from foul-ups is the focal point of Michael Alter's 'Best New Mistake' awards at SurePayroll, a payroll-services company in Glenview, Ill. Only people who are trying to do a good job, make a mistake and learn from it are eligible for the $400 annual cash award.
SurePayroll是一家位于伊利諾伊州格倫維尤（Glenview）的薪酬服務公司，該公司的首席執行長邁克爾•奧爾特（Michael Alter）推出的“最佳新錯誤”獎的著眼點就是從錯誤中吸取經驗。只有努力做好工作、犯下錯誤并從中吸取教訓的人才有資格獲得每年400美元的現金獎勵。
To test new functions of SurePayroll's systems in 2009, project manager Kate Vick created a fake company with imaginary employees. She flagged the data as a 'test' before processing it, and the trial run went smoothly.
2009年，為了測試SurePayroll系統的新功能，項目經理凱特•維克（Kate Vick）創建了一家空殼公司，公司的員工都是虛構出來的。她在處理數據之前先給數據貼上了“測試”標簽。測試進行得非常順利。
But Ms. Vick failed to foresee that the system would automatically report the fake employees to a state payroll-tax agency as if they were new hires at an actual company. A few days later, she was stunned by a phone call from an Illinois official asking her to confirm that her 'company,' named 'Product Kate Test,' had just hired someone named 'Salaried Employee One' with a phone number of 555-555-5555. For a painful 15 minutes, 'he went through my entire list of fake employees and wouldn't let me interrupt,' she says. The official eventually hung up after she explained and apologized. But he made the issue seem so serious that 'I felt like a very small human being,' she says.
但維克沒有預見到的是，該系統會把虛構出來的員工當作一家真實公司的新雇員自動上報給州薪資稅征收機構。幾天后，她被一位伊利諾伊州政府官員打來的電話弄懵了，那位官員要她確認她的Product Kate Test的公司是否剛雇傭了一位名叫Salaried Employee One電話號碼為“555-555-5555的員工。在這痛苦的15分鐘里，他念完了我的整張虛構員工表，我連話都插不進去，她說。最終在她一番解釋并道歉之后，這位官員掛斷了電話。她說，他處理這件事的態度非常嚴肅，讓我感到無地自容。
When Ms. Vick confessed to her boss, Steve Kania, he had a laugh at the official's 'FBI-esque seriousness' about 'completely ridiculous data,' says Mr. Kania, a vice president, product management. They now train others to avoid using hypothetical new hires during tests.
維克的上司，該公司負責產品管理的副總裁史蒂夫•卡尼亞（Steve Kania）說，當維克向他認錯，說到那位官員對對待完全荒謬的數據的聯邦調查局（FBI）式的認真態度時，他笑了起來。如今，他們已經開始對其他員工進行指導，告訴他們避免在測試中使用虛構出來的新員工。
Mr. Alter describes the fallout as 'paying tuition. As opposed to saying, 'You screwed up,' or, 'You messed up,' we say, 'Let's talk about what we learned.' That drives a lot of innovation,' he says.
奧爾特將負面影響形容為交學費。我們不說“你做錯了”或者“你搞砸了”，相反我們會說“讓我們談談我們學到了什么教訓”,這推動了很多創新，他說。
Employers use a variety of tactics to foster innovation. Grey New York blocks off a 'no meeting zone' every Thursday morning, to allow employees sustained time for work on creative projects. Procter and Gamble Co. has set up a division for innovation, called FutureWorks.
雇主會利用各種策略來激勵創新。Grey New York每星期四早上都會留出“無會議時段”，讓員工們留下連續的時間從事創造性項目。寶潔公司(Procter and Gamble Co.)還特別成立了一個名為FutureWorks事業部，專門從事創新研究。
Some add game or nap rooms, expansive art-filled atriums, hiking trails or private meditation rooms with music and adjustable lighting.
有些公司還設立了游戲室、休息室，布置了裝飾了各種藝術品的門廊，開辟了步行小徑以及私人冥想室，里面不但播放著音樂，燈光還可調節。
Intuitive Surgical, a Sunnyvale, Calif., maker of surgical robots, limits work teams to five members 'like jazz bands,' says Gary Guthart, president and chief executive. Team members tend to share ideas easily, respond quickly to problems and hold each other accountable, he says.
Intuitive Surgical是位于加利福尼亞州森尼維爾（Sunnyvale）的一家外科手術機器人生產商，該公司將團隊成員的人數限制為5人，就像爵士樂隊一樣。該公司總裁兼首席執行長加里•居塔爾（Gary Guthart）說，團隊成員通常都能順暢地分享想法，迅速對問題做出反應，并為彼此負責。
However, all innovative companies tend to be alike in certain ways, Ms. Estrin says. They encourage coworkers to trust each other, comment on each other's work and take criticism in stride. Also, managers encourage intelligent risk-taking, tolerate failure and insist that employees share information openly.
不過，所有創新型公司在某些方面都比較類似，埃斯特林說。這類公司鼓勵同事彼此信任，對彼此的工作提出意見，泰然面對批評。同樣，管理者都鼓勵聰明的冒險行為，容忍失敗，并堅持認為員工應該公開分享信息。
At the 150-employee Consumer Electronics Association, an Arlington, Va., trade group, Gary Shapiro, president and chief executive, tries to make it safe to fail by talking openly about screw-ups. In his eight-page manifesto called 'Gary's Guidelines,' writes Mr. Shapiro, co-author of a book on innovation: 'Mistakes are OK -- hiding them is not.'
Consumer Electronics Association是位于弗吉尼亞州阿靈頓（Arlington）的一個貿易集團，擁有150名員工。集團的總裁兼首席執行長加里•夏皮羅（Gary Shapiro）經常公開談論各種失誤，以此向員工表面失敗是安全的。夏皮羅在長達8頁、名為“加里指南”的宣言書中寫道，可以犯錯，但不可以隱瞞。夏皮羅曾與人合寫過一本關于創新的書。
