从失败中寻找好创意
Better Ideas Through Failure

To pitch a prospective client for her ad agency, Amanda Zolten knew she a had to take a risk. But the client's product -- kitty litter -- posed a unique challenge.
阿曼达•佐尔坦（Amanda Zolten）明白，为了给她的广告公司搞定这个潜在客户，必须得冒点风险。但客户的产品的确是个不同寻常挑战。这种产品是猫砂。
Lucy Belle, Ms. Zolten's cat, furnished the answer.
佐尔坦的猫，美人露西（Lucy Belle），给出了答案。
Before she and her team met with six of the company's executives, Ms. Zolten buried Lucy Belle's mess in a box of the company's litter and pushed it under the conference-room table. No one noticed until Ms. Zolten pointed it out -- and the fact that no one had smelled it.
在佐尔坦和她的团队与该公司的六位高管见面之前，她将美人露西的粪便埋在盛着该公司的猫砂的盒子里，并把盒子推到了会议室桌子底下。在佐尔坦说出来之前，没有人注意到它。事实是，谁也没有闻到它的味道。
Shocked, several executives pushed back from the table. Two left the room. After a pause, those who remained started laughing, says Ms. Zolten, a senior vice president with Grey New York. 'We achieved what we hoped, which was creating a memorable experience,' she says. 有几位高管在震惊之下推开了椅子，还有两个人离开了会议室。广告公司 Grey New York的高级深副总裁佐尔坦说，过了一会儿，留下来的人开始大笑。我们的目的达到了，我们就是要创造一次令人难忘的经历。
She won't know for a few weeks whether Grey won the business. But her boss, Tor Myhren, has already named Ms. Zolten the winner of his first quarterly 'Heroic Failure' award -- for taking a big, edgy risk.
在接下来的几个星期之内，她不会知道Grey New York能否拿下这笔生意。但她的老板托尔•迈伦（Tor Myhren）已经宣布佐尔坦为他的首个季度“英勇失败”奖得主，理由是她很机智地冒了一次很大的风险。

Amid worries that we are becoming less innovative, some companies are rewarding employees for their mistakes or questionable risks. The tactic is rooted in research showing that innovations are often accompanied by a high rate of failure.
阿曼达•佐尔坦从她所在的一家纽约广告公司的老板手中接过“英勇失败”奖杯。由于担心人们不再那么锐意创新，有些公司对犯错或冒可疑风险的员工进行奖励。有一项研究表明，创新往往与高失败率相伴而行。这些公司的这种举措就是根据这项研究做出的。
'Failure, and how companies deal with failure, is a very big part of innovation,' says Judy Estrin of Menlo Park, Calif., a founder of seven high-tech companies and author of a book on innovation. Failures caused by sloppiness or laziness are bad. But 'if employees try something that was worth trying and fail, and if they are open about it, and if they learn from that failure, that is a good thing.'
加利福尼亚州门罗公园（Menlo Park）的朱迪•埃斯特林（Judy Estrin）说，失败，以及公司如何应对失败，是创新的重要组成部分。她是七家高科技公司的创始人，还写过一本关于创新的书。因马虎或懒惰导致的失败是坏事。但如果员工尝试了某种值得尝试的事并失败了，但是他们能坦诚面对，并从失败中吸取教训，那么这就是件好事。
Grey's Mr. Myhren recently started handing out the 'Heroic Failure' award because he was worried that fast growth at the agency, a unit of WPP's Grey Group in New York, was making employees 'a little more conservative, maybe a little slower,' he says. Creator of E*Trade's talking-baby ads, Grey New York has more than doubled to 900 employees since 2008.
Grey New York的老板迈伦最近才开始颁发“英勇失败”奖，因为他担心该广告公司（WPP集团在纽约的葛瑞集团(Grey Group)的分支机构）的快速增长让员工变得有点保守，甚至还有些迟钝。自2008年以来，Grey New York公司的员工数已经翻了一倍还多，达到了900人。网络券商E*Trade有名的“可爱的宝宝”系列广告就出自这家公司的手笔。
'I thought rewarding a little risk-taking was potentially an answer,' Mr. Myhren says. The award is for ideas that are 'edgier or riskier, or new and totally unproven,' he says.
迈伦说，我认为对冒点风险的行为进行奖励可能是个办法。按他的说法，这个奖是颁给那些更前卫或更冒险、新鲜而完全未经证实的点子的。
Mr. Myhren acknowledges that Ms. Zolten's prank could have gotten his eight-member team 'kicked out of the room and told never to come back.' He adds, 'There was enough chaos in the room that we weren't sure whether it was a good or bad thing.' Nevertheless, he calls the idea 'absolutely brilliant' and deserving of the garish two-foot-tall 'Heroic Failure' trophy. Regardless of how it turns out, he says, 'we're proud that we had that idea.'
迈伦承认，佐尔坦近乎恶作剧的行为可能会让他的8人团队被踢出会议室，而且永远被拒之门外。他还说，会议室里一片混乱，我们也不知道这是件好事还是件坏事。尽管如此，他还是夸奖这个主意绝妙无比，配得上2英尺高、光彩夺目的“英勇失败”奖杯。不管结果如何，我们都为想出这个点子而自豪，他说。
Many people succeed at producing innovations because they churn out a very large number of ideas, both good and bad, says Dean Keith Simonton, a psychology professor at the University of California, Davis. 'The most successful people tend to be those with the most failures,' says Dr. Simonton, author of more than 500 studies and articles and 12 books on creativity and innovation.
美国加利福尼亚大学戴维斯分校（University of California, Davis）的心理学教授迪安•基斯•西蒙顿（Dean Keith Simonton）说，很多人的创新之所以能成功，是因为他们能够产生大量的点子，包括好点子和坏点子。西蒙顿博士说，最成功的人往往是那些失败最多的人。他撰写了500多篇研究论文，还出版了12本关于创造力和创新的专著。
Extracting lessons from foul-ups is the focal point of Michael Alter's 'Best New Mistake' awards at SurePayroll, a payroll-services company in Glenview, Ill. Only people who are trying to do a good job, make a mistake and learn from it are eligible for the $400 annual cash award.
SurePayroll是一家位于伊利诺伊州格伦维尤（Glenview）的薪酬服务公司，该公司的首席执行长迈克尔•奥尔特（Michael Alter）推出的“最佳新错误”奖的着眼点就是从错误中吸取经验。只有努力做好工作、犯下错误并从中吸取教训的人才有资格获得每年400美元的现金奖励。
To test new functions of SurePayroll's systems in 2009, project manager Kate Vick created a fake company with imaginary employees. She flagged the data as a 'test' before processing it, and the trial run went smoothly.
2009年，为了测试SurePayroll系统的新功能，项目经理凯特•维克（Kate Vick）创建了一家空壳公司，公司的员工都是虚构出来的。她在处理数据之前先给数据贴上了“测试”标签。测试进行得非常顺利。
But Ms. Vick failed to foresee that the system would automatically report the fake employees to a state payroll-tax agency as if they were new hires at an actual company. A few days later, she was stunned by a phone call from an Illinois official asking her to confirm that her 'company,' named 'Product Kate Test,' had just hired someone named 'Salaried Employee One' with a phone number of 555-555-5555. For a painful 15 minutes, 'he went through my entire list of fake employees and wouldn't let me interrupt,' she says. The official eventually hung up after she explained and apologized. But he made the issue seem so serious that 'I felt like a very small human being,' she says.
但维克没有预见到的是，该系统会把虚构出来的员工当作一家真实公司的新雇员自动上报给州薪资税征收机构。几天后，她被一位伊利诺伊州政府官员打来的电话弄懵了，那位官员要她确认她的Product Kate Test的公司是否刚雇佣了一位名叫Salaried Employee One电话号码为“555-555-5555的员工。在这痛苦的15分钟里，他念完了我的整张虚构员工表，我连话都插不进去，她说。最终在她一番解释并道歉之后，这位官员挂断了电话。她说，他处理这件事的态度非常严肃，让我感到无地自容。
When Ms. Vick confessed to her boss, Steve Kania, he had a laugh at the official's 'FBI-esque seriousness' about 'completely ridiculous data,' says Mr. Kania, a vice president, product management. They now train others to avoid using hypothetical new hires during tests.
维克的上司，该公司负责产品管理的副总裁史蒂夫•卡尼亚（Steve Kania）说，当维克向他认错，说到那位官员对对待完全荒谬的数据的联邦调查局（FBI）式的认真态度时，他笑了起来。如今，他们已经开始对其他员工进行指导，告诉他们避免在测试中使用虚构出来的新员工。
Mr. Alter describes the fallout as 'paying tuition. As opposed to saying, 'You screwed up,' or, 'You messed up,' we say, 'Let's talk about what we learned.' That drives a lot of innovation,' he says.
奥尔特将负面影响形容为交学费。我们不说“你做错了”或者“你搞砸了”，相反我们会说“让我们谈谈我们学到了什么教训”,这推动了很多创新，他说。
Employers use a variety of tactics to foster innovation. Grey New York blocks off a 'no meeting zone' every Thursday morning, to allow employees sustained time for work on creative projects. Procter and Gamble Co. has set up a division for innovation, called FutureWorks.
雇主会利用各种策略来激励创新。Grey New York每星期四早上都会留出“无会议时段”，让员工们留下连续的时间从事创造性项目。宝洁公司(Procter and Gamble Co.)还特别成立了一个名为FutureWorks事业部，专门从事创新研究。
Some add game or nap rooms, expansive art-filled atriums, hiking trails or private meditation rooms with music and adjustable lighting.
有些公司还设立了游戏室、休息室，布置了装饰了各种艺术品的门廊，开辟了步行小径以及私人冥想室，里面不但播放着音乐，灯光还可调节。
Intuitive Surgical, a Sunnyvale, Calif., maker of surgical robots, limits work teams to five members 'like jazz bands,' says Gary Guthart, president and chief executive. Team members tend to share ideas easily, respond quickly to problems and hold each other accountable, he says.
Intuitive Surgical是位于加利福尼亚州森尼维尔（Sunnyvale）的一家外科手术机器人生产商，该公司将团队成员的人数限制为5人，就像爵士乐队一样。该公司总裁兼首席执行长加里•居塔尔（Gary Guthart）说，团队成员通常都能顺畅地分享想法，迅速对问题做出反应，并为彼此负责。
However, all innovative companies tend to be alike in certain ways, Ms. Estrin says. They encourage coworkers to trust each other, comment on each other's work and take criticism in stride. Also, managers encourage intelligent risk-taking, tolerate failure and insist that employees share information openly.
不过，所有创新型公司在某些方面都比较类似，埃斯特林说。这类公司鼓励同事彼此信任，对彼此的工作提出意见，泰然面对批评。同样，管理者都鼓励聪明的冒险行为，容忍失败，并坚持认为员工应该公开分享信息。
At the 150-employee Consumer Electronics Association, an Arlington, Va., trade group, Gary Shapiro, president and chief executive, tries to make it safe to fail by talking openly about screw-ups. In his eight-page manifesto called 'Gary's Guidelines,' writes Mr. Shapiro, co-author of a book on innovation: 'Mistakes are OK -- hiding them is not.'
Consumer Electronics Association是位于弗吉尼亚州阿灵顿（Arlington）的一个贸易集团，拥有150名员工。集团的总裁兼首席执行长加里•夏皮罗（Gary Shapiro）经常公开谈论各种失误，以此向员工表面失败是安全的。夏皮罗在长达8页、名为“加里指南”的宣言书中写道，可以犯错，但不可以隐瞒。夏皮罗曾与人合写过一本关于创新的书。