Mistakes to Success: Learning and Adapting When Things Go Wrong
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President Barack Obama and his administration are making unprecedented investments in identifying, cultivating, and replicating social innovations. This unique federal effort seeks to build on the strengths of the nonprofit sector to improve the lives of children, families, and communities. At the same time, foundations are designing prize strategies to encourage innovation, spurred by the success of the X PRIZE. An overarching consideration in both approaches is that hunting for successful social innovations may not be sufficient: it is only a part of the answer. A treasure trove of innovation mistakes and failures exists, mostly out of sight, that could inform the design and replication of a next generation of social innovations. We need to know more about what hasn’t worked and why. We need to learn from our mistakes. Mistakes to Success: Learning and Adapting When Things Go Wrong is a collection of essays about social innovation failures, showcasing a small portion of this untapped resource. Two key challenges motivate the book. First, the overall challenge of solving intractable social problems like poverty is exacerbated by our inability to design and implement solutions that are effective and stick. We must admit that our progress has not been sufficient and that more innovation is needed. Second, our propensity for ignoring and hiding, rather than disclosing and reflecting on, failed approaches limits our ability for real learning and improved investments. In other words, the learning crisis we face in the nonprofit sector impedes our ability to be more effective in reaching better outcomes for families and communities. We must ask ourselves whether we have an innovation problem or a failure-recognition problem, and consider what capacities, tools, incentives, and supports are needed to reflect more usefully about success and failure.
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About the Book
Throughout the nonprofit sector, successes are celebrated and mistakes tend to be deliberately forgotten. But, as Mistakes to Success: Learning and Adapting When Things Go Wrong makes clear, this is a lost opportunity. Discussing, analyzing and learning from mistakes should be a common practice, which can strengthen the work of nonprofits. Breaking new ground, Mistakes to Success provides a rich collection of revealing essays focused on failures in the field of community economic development. The authors, leaders in the nonprofit field, write with firsthand knowledge about a range of projects, including an ethnic marketplace in Chicago, a childcare assistance initiative in New York City, national workforce development initiatives and an innovative program to help working families purchase affordable used cars. These compelling stories provide valuable insights into what it takes to shape and manage complicated initiatives designed to improve opportunities for lower-income people and communities. This collection will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in the challenges associated with social innovations, including program leaders, nonprofit advocates, policymakers, elected officials, foundation officers and members of the public. “Researchers and practitioners jump at the chance to show their latest program impact results and share best practices. Asking them to acknowledge, much less discuss, their mistakes is like inviting them for a root canal. Yet, we learn some of our most useful lessons from our mistakes. The authors deserve gratitude from those interested in improving the practice of workforce and community development.” – Chris King, Director, Ray Marshall Center, LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin “This volume offers a fascinating walk through a variety of social innovation programs that didn’t succeed, or at least didn’t work as planned. Key themes, such as defining what constitutes success, determining when a project’s success should be judged, balancing or prioritizing among the multiple goals social projects often reach for, and building and sustaining organizational capacity are addressed in a variety of contexts, providing a rich set of insights for both program leaders and investors.” – Maureen Conway, Director, The Aspen Institute Workforce Strategies Initiative
About the Author
Robert Giloth is vice president, Center for Family Economic Success, at the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore, Maryland, and has written widely about community economic development. Colin Austin directs workforce development programs at MDC, Inc., in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he designs and manages projects related to career advancement for low-wage workers.