A new article in Scientific American - Why Creativity is a Numbers Game – hits on themes that resonate with me. The point of the article is that even famous creators like Edison and Steve Jobs have many failures as well as their prominent successes. In fact, even Shakespeare was remarkably inconsistent in his creative output.
Problematically, most of us are scared of failure, or at least want to avoid it, so we never get past the point where we suck – always at the beginning – and start to improve.
Back in 2009 I wrote an article – What is the role of “failure” in innovation – where I explored the role of ‘failure’ in my own career. It seems relevant again.