Commentary on the Wharton Business School’s site on the book Innovation: The Cleveland Clinic Way by Thomas J. Graham MD is worth taking a look at. The commentary features the Cleveland Clinic’s Ten Commandments of Innovation.
My favorite commandment was number nine as cited below by Graham. This allows for an acceptance of failure and to learn from it by experience.
“Because of the inherent challenges associated with innovation, celebrate the pursuit and process, not just the outcome. Nothing kills innovation faster than the weight of expectation and reducing its measure of success to patents granted or dollars earned. If failure is not anticipated and even celebrated, the innovation culture will be stifled. This doesn’t mean that innovation should be sloppy, wasteful or lacking a level of expectation. But even failure has a welcome by-product, experience. While solving some of the biggest health care problems, stumbling is to be expected and makes eventual success that much sweeter.”