Failure is often hailed as the ‘secret’ to innovation; although an inherent and inevitable part of the innovation journey, stories about failure tend to be made less visible and rarely attract as much attention as success narratives.

In recent years, there have been suggestions that by increasing the failure rate in technological innovation (as in the ‘fail fast, fail often’ mantra) agility would grow in the system, which would subsequently lead to better innovations. However, failure tends to come at a cost, often at personal, professional and system level.

This session will bring together participants from the technology start-up and academic community. We will hear from 4 contributors with different experiences dealing with complex change and fear of failure in different environments, before we open up for discussion and questions from the audience.

Speakers:

Marc DuBois, independent humanitarian analyst and consultant, senior fellow at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, and formerly executive director of Médecins sans Frontières in UK/IE.

Devika Thapar, co-founder at Wilbe, a London based venture firm that educates, supports and invests in entrepreneurial scientists advancing the future of human and environmental health and formerly head of new product development at IBM Watson.

Mike Gill, Associate Professor in Organisation Studies at the University of Oxford’s Said Business School, with research interests in fear of failure in professional settings.

Cyan Collier, digital health professional.

This event is supported by Research England’s Connecting Capability Fund (CCF) through the Pitch-In programme and is co-organised with Digital Health Oxford (DHOx).

Please join the Meetup Group Digital Health Oxford: https://www.meetup.com/Digital-Health-Oxford/