For complex, wicked, social challenges, success is transitionary and failure inevitable. Blurring the rigid binaries of successes and failures holds nuanced building blocks of progress.
We’re on a journey to make learning efficient. Building on the shoulders of giants who dared to try and failed, So we can catapult to a more impactful landing ground each time.
Quotes from the Conclave
The problem with the concept of "too big to fail" is that we first allow entities to grow excessively, then pour resources into ensuring they don’t collapse. If those same resources were invested in helping smaller players thrive from the start, there would be no need to safeguard large organizations from failure.
We really need to be looking at "Too small to Survive" and how do we ensure they do? These are the institutions and enterprises that will bring development.
Shri Suresh Prabhu
Former Union Minister
Much of the climate adaptation work that we have been doing today is piecemeal, incremental, and short-term. We are sitting in bubbles - humanitarian folks, development folks, climate folks. We celebrate farmers selling yields but the very next day all that income is gone in dealing with the illness that comes from heat waves. When we are designing climate adaptation projects, we need all of them together, but we are not talking to each other right now.
Asif Saleh,
Executive Director, BRAC, Bangladesh
One of the biggest failures of institutions is that we all have different ideas of what success is. We have somewhere lost our way of what we want to really achieve.
We are imparting skills to students but not helping them grow; Not helping them think about what they want to go on and do in their future, which can make their lives more meaningful.
Ambuj Sagar,
Deputy Director (Strategy & Planning), IIT Delhi
I was just another academic pointing at things that weren’t working or talking about the big things have to happen. But I was of no help to the people working for actual change to happen. I hoped to engage in science that can actually support changemakers, which is what led to the 'Presencing Institute'.
Otto Scharmer,
Founding Chair, The Presencing Institute
We found that people that we had treated and sent back, were physically treated, but around 70% of the people have not been able to become productively employed. That’s our failure.
We also needed to look at what happens after they are treated for cancer and go back home. What are they doing, are they able to take up employment again? I realized that those are the ideas we need for the patients we treated. When working for livelihoods, we cannot force our ideas of income generation onto people. It has to be what they want, what they’re built to do and how.
Dr. Ravi Kannan R,
Director - Cachar Cancer Hospital and Research Centre
I thought everyone who made movies before were bad directors and I was going to change that. But then I learnt that film making is not like tennis, it’s like a cricket team. You need all the other 10 players to be playing well to succeed.
Prashanth Neel,
Film Director & Screenwriter
Our intentions were good. We wanted to respond to the urgency of climate change in culturally relevant ways. But in our rush to learn, we sometimes overlooked the importance of deeper engagement, of long-term planning, and of making good on the expectations that were set by merely showing up.
Lande Ajose,
Managing Director, Waverley Street Foundation
Who we are today is a reflection of our learnings and evolution. The social sector rarely talks about failures. Every success is built on a series of things that didn’t work. It’s starting point is to solve what’s not working and hence failure isn’t an everyday conversation
- CSR is new. It’s just a decade old and it will build better and stronger in time
- What CSR needs to awaken is to the need of having qualified people to manage the funds and purpose.
Dhruvi Shah,
Executive Trustee & CEO, Axis Bank Foundation
Can we sustain smaller institutions that bring diverse perspectives on what we mean by a good life? This will bring back regionalism, respect for local knowledge and traditions, and increase proximity to students. I believe that having smaller, more flexible and agile institutions catering to communities which are today excluded because they just can't get into that bigger institution.
Geetha Narayanan,
Founder - Director, Srishti School of Art, Design & Technology
Collectively there are 3 failures we must watch out for:
- Despair: To me hope is the new religion. The religion that can but unite. Hope is the fuel for action. Hope will light paths to keep showing up and acting
- Not keeping an open mind: The world is changing rapidly and change is the only constant.
- Loosing out connections: If we fail to stay connected it will be a serious failure. Let's find emphatic and creative ways to stay connected and work together.
- The goal isn’t to glorify failure but to approach it with honesty and vulnerability - Acknowledging missteps, learning from them, and using those insights to improve and move forward.
Rohini Nilekani,
Chairperson - Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies
In the energy sector, we successfully drew attention, brought people together, and created momentum. However, we also attracted investors who lacked experience in funding the energy sector. They misunderstood the focus on impact investing, which caused our efforts to lose direction. We ended up pursuing initiatives that weren't aligned with the sector's actual needs. The focus on impact and scale became diluted, and we didn't do enough to support local entrepreneurs.
Richenda Van Leeuwen,
President - Hummingbird Green Solutions
Ready to flip the script on failures?
We are very much conscious and intentional in wanting to establish Impact / Failure as a platform, beyond just a conclave. A platform that celebrates failures as well as resilience, fosters collaboration, and sparks innovation by embracing failures!
Are you passionate about this mission? Do you want to be part of the journey to expand Impact / Failure into an ongoing engagement and be part of our team? We’d love to hear from you!
