A Culture of Failure

Some places simply hum with the energy of creation. San Francisco is one of those places where the vibrancy of the creative class of social entrepreneurs is palpable and one can sense in the population the urgency to do something that makes a difference and contribute to developing solutions to the world's most pressing problems.



We were told yesterday when we visited the Bay Area Hub that 1 in 5 ventures in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley succeed. One entrepreneur confessed, "we fail more quickly and start again more quickly." In this environment that gave birth to the Dot.com era, people have made a lot of money on their success only to fail the next day. Simply put, inherent in the tech and dot.com culture is an internalization of risk and a lack of fear to fail. This essentially means that these folks are not afraid to try, and that is admirable.

Here social entrepreneurs understand that to affect change, you have to remain lean and mean, keep overhead costs low, and stand on the shoulders of your colleagues who can shore up gaps in skills required to test innovative approaches.

But what is the relationship of social entrepreneurs in the creative class to those in more established institutions? My immediate response is that the establishment must strategically tap into the pipeline of creative enterprises that pass through the proof of concept threshold and are ready to replicate or scale up. This is the critical point where we must help them source seed capital to grow and thrive. But even though one must factor in failure, it is important to capture a body of knowledge to help inform, screen, and identify key aspects of those likely to rise to the top of the heap most successfully. As I bring back some new knowledge I gained here I will be applying some of these lessons to my work at the Development Marketplace to create linkages between successful ventures and the abundant capital to tap into to support such risk and innovation.