Starting from how Elon Musk sees the explosion of his SpaceX Starship SN8 during its test flight as “a successful failure”, Professor Bao Yongjian from Fudan University School of Management pointed out that, for companies seeking to lead with thinking, designing successful failures is a necessary cognitive tool. There are generally four approaches:
1. Copy the successful experience when dealing with high probability events. Practices like promoting the best performance in the organization, using KPIs to assess the individual performance, summarizing and copying business models are all based on this principle.
2. Correct the errors in high probability events. Understand the causes of errors and set up an error correction mechanism so as to improve the stability of products and services.
3. Grasp the essence of low probability events. Explore the new phenomena and discover the commonalities so as to approach the “first principles”.
4. Learn from the errors in low probability events. A typical example is crisis management: take the small probability event causing the crises as a precious material, analyze it, detect from within the signs of the imminent new order, and break down the boundaries of cognition.
