Reward Failure to Encourage New Ideas

I've been kicking around a draft article for a few weeks now, based on the topic of "failure as a means of success". Even now, that concept sounds like bullshit every time I read it.

It's not. It's one of the best ways I know of to spur continued innovation, excellence, and personal/professional growth. Thomas Edison has been quoted as saying that he had not yet failed, but he had invented over 10,000 ways to NOT build a light bulb.

Off topic: Nikola Tesla, Edison's one-time employee turned competitor, and most vocal critic, didn't manage to build a light bulb. Instead he created the Tesla coil, whose high-voltage/low-amperage thunderbolts can be harnessed to make beautiful 8-bit music.

Back on point: I never got my "embrace failure" spiel written.
Boom - saved by Lifehacker, the Beeb (not the Biebs!), and of course; Google.

Astro Teller (yes, that's his name), Director of Moonshots at Google (yes, that's his title) has this to say:

"You must reward people for failing. If not, they won't take risks and make breakthroughs. If you don't reward failure, people will hang on to a doomed idea for fear of the consequences. That wastes time and saps an organization's spirit.

Finding new transformational ideas is like sending out a team of scouts to explore uncharted terrain for new mountains to climb.

If you shame them when they come back, if you tell them that they've failed you because they didn't find a mountain, no matter how diligently they looked for or how cleverly they looked for it, those scouts will quit your company."

I couldn't have said it any better myself.