This video explores the concept of failure and its role in achieving success. Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School, discusses three types of failure: basic, complex, and intelligent, emphasizing the importance of intelligent failures for learning and growth.

I came to study failure to try to figure out what determines success. There is a deep-rooted belief in our culture that success means never failing, that failure is unacceptable, that if I fail, it means there is something wrong with me. Of course, that's nonsense. We all make mistakes, and failure is part of the journey toward success. My name is Amy Edmondson, and I am the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School. My most recent book is called "Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well." I identify three archetypes of failure, and only one of them is the good kind. The first kind is basic failure. A basic failure is something in known territory where a simple error led to the failure. Sometimes that failure is small—like spilling tomato juice. No big deal. Sometimes it's enormous, like when a Citibank employee accidentally transfers $900 million instead of the $8 million they were supposed to transfer to a client. Big, huge failure. Simple mistake. I define complex failure as a failure with multiple causes. It's a kind of perfect storm. Supply chain breakdowns during a global pandemic would be an example of complex failures. Multiple factors, from workers not being able to come to work because they were ill, to weather patterns, to government leaders' decisions—all of those factors coming together, creating this massive breakdown. Intelligent failure is the right kind of wrong. It's where new knowledge and discovery come from. Intelligent failures are essentially the results of an experiment. There are four criteria for calling a failure intelligent: 1. It's in new territory. We don't yet have the knowledge we need to produce a success. 2. It is in pursuit of a goal, whether that's learning a new sport or discovering a new molecule. 3. It's hypothesis-driven. You've done your homework. It's not randomly trying things to see if anything works. 4. The failure is as small as possible—just big enough to learn from. It means we don't waste resources. Whereas I am in favor of minimizing the basic failures, and I am in favor of trying to catch and correct all the problems that lead to complex failures, I think it's a good idea to have more intelligent failures. If you want to have more intelligent failures in your life, in your work, essentially you have to think like a scientist. They have trained themselves to not just tolerate failure, but to really welcome the lessons that each failure brings.