失败新解

    要实现新一轮经济增长其实很简单，就是让更多人有机会进行更多尝试。工业时代注重规模，尽可能避免犯错误。结果，我们都太害怕失败。公司只会接受基本可以预测到结果的项目。员工也担心做出影响职业发展的行动。如果因为对失败的担心，我们不敢尝试新事物，又怎么可能变得更好？如果每当有人尝试变革性的新事物却失败之后，我们只会进行恶意中伤，又如何能在当今巨大的体制挑战中取得进步？如果我们将失败重新定义为有意图的重复，又会怎样？

    我们不妨以电动汽车服务商Better Place为例。这家创业公司希望通过电池更换的商业模式，创造一个属于电动汽车的世界。我认为Better Place及其创始人夏嘉曦就是一个最好的商业模式创新案例，同时也体现了真实测试平台的重要性。

    2005年，夏嘉曦在瑞士达沃斯出席全球经济论坛（World Economic Forum，WEF）。WEF创始人克劳斯•施瓦布在会议开始时提出的一个框架问题令他深受启发。施瓦布问道：“到2020年，你如何让这个世界变得更美好？”夏嘉曦非常认真地思考了施瓦布的问题，同时决定通过创建基于市场的基础设施，支持向纯电动汽车转变，进而减少人类对石油的依赖，创造一个更美好的世界。夏嘉曦知道，要想实现这个目标，唯一的途径就是进行商业模式创新和行业体制改革。好吧，他的尝试并未成功。成立六年以来，Better Place募集了8.5亿美元私人资本，还在以色列和丹麦开始商业经营，但如今公司却申请了破产。

    那些“事后诸葛亮们”很快就开始对这家公司发起抨击。《纽约时报》（New York Times ）专栏作家戴维•布鲁克斯直接将矛头对准夏嘉曦，说他是一个“聪明的科技型创业者”，但同时也表示他是一名“靠会议鼓吹的资本家。这种人往往能把幻灯片演示得天花乱坠，但历史却证明，他们的存在并无实际意义。”哇，戴维•布鲁克斯批评别人在会议上分享自己的观点可真是信手拈来，也不想想他自己不也在利用《纽约时报》的平台做着同样的事情吗？夏嘉曦是21世纪新一代领导者中的一员，这些领导者知道，要实现行业转型，与成立一家公司一样，需要发动一场运动。

    运动需要病毒式的社交对话，人们可以参与其中，与朋友进行分享。在创新活动中分享创意，可以使不同寻常的想法随机碰撞，进而帮助催化运动。我想以扎珀斯公司（Zappos）的谢家华和网络应用公司37Signals的贾森•弗里德为例。两人都领导着非常成功的公司，如果大家深入观察就会发现，这两家公司都处于一场运动当中。他们都是灵感的催化剂。

    The key to unlocking the next wave of economic growth may be as simple as enabling more people to try more stuff. The industrial era was all about scale and squeezing out the possibility of mistakes. As a result we are too afraid to fail. Companies only take on projects with highly predictable results. Employees fall in line for fear of making career-limiting moves. How will we get better if the fear of failure prevents us from trying anything new? How will we make progress on the big system challenges of our time, if every time someone tries something transformational and fails, we vilify them? What if we reframed failure as intentional iteration?

    Take the example of Better Place, the startup that set out to create a world full of electric cars with a novel battery swapping business model. I highlighted Better Place and its founder Shai Agassi as one of the best examples of business model innovation and the importance of a real world test bed.

    In 2005 Agassi attended the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. He was inspired by a framing question asked by WEF's founder Klaus Schwab at the beginning of the conference, "How do you make the world a better place by 2020?" Agassi took Schwab's question seriously and decided he would make the world a better place by reducing its dependence on oil by creating market-based infrastructure to support a transition to all-electric cars. Agassi knew that the only way to accomplish his goal was through business model innovation and industry system change. OK, it didn't work. After 6 years, raising $850 million in private capital and launching commercial operations in Israel and Denmark, Better Place filed for bankruptcy.

    The "I told you so crowd" immediately started taking shots. New York Times columnist David Brooks took a swing directly at Agassi calling him a "brilliant technology entrepreneur" but implying that he was among "conference circuit capitalists who give fantastic presentations but have turned out to be marginal in history." Ouch. Easy for David Brooks to criticize others for sharing their point of view at conferences when he leverages a New York Times platform to do the same thing. Agassi is among a new breed of 21st century leaders who know that transforming any industry is as much about launching a movement as building a company.

    Movements require a viral social conversation that people can participate in and share with friends. Sharing stories at innovation events that enable random collisions of unusual suspects help to catalyze movements. I would point to other leaders including Tony Hsieh at Zappos (AMZN) and Jason Fried at 37Signals. Both are leading successful companies that if you look under the covers are really movements. They are inspiration accelerators.