The Confidence to Fail
I was recently watching a Kobe Bryant interview where he discussed his summers growing up. He recalled a summer when he scored 0 points playing in the summer league and how the words of his father helped him “gain the confidence to fail”.
Here is his transcript. The video is here
0:10yeah i had a summer where I played basketball where i was like 10 or 11
0:13
years old and here I come playing and i don't score one point
0:18
the entire summer i remember crying about it being upset about it my father
0:21
just gave me a hug and said listen
0:23
whether you score zero or score 60, I'm gonna love you no matter what wow now
0:28
that is the most important thing that you can say to a child
0:32
because from there i was like okay it gives me all the confidence in the world to fail but to hell with that I'm scoring 60.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how people behave and what differentiates those that are inspired to innovate from the rest. I often come back to the idea of having the permission to fail. If you avoid failure, you are not taking risks. Without risk, you cannot innovate.
As we look around the world and see the variation in innovation, research output, and entrepreneurial intentions, how much of that is shaped by culture? How much is it a function of how cultures embrace failures?
Are some cultures welcoming of failure and therefore give people the confidence to try new things? Does this spur innovation? As Kobe pointed out, can we observe this variation at the household level too? What about at the firm level?
Ask yourself today, are you giving the people around you the confidence to fail.
