Why Failing Deserves a Second Look
In today’s dynamic business environment, success stories often dominate headlines. Yet a quieter reality is shaping how leaders think about progress. Innovation rarely emerges from continuous success. It grows from the disciplined interpretation of failing.
Take Google Glass, for example, which was launched in 2013 amid enormous hype; the wearable technology quickly became one of Google’s most public missteps. However, that same experiment led to breakthroughs in augmented reality (AR), a technology now powering industries from logistics to healthcare. What once seemed like a failed product became the prototype for a trillion-dollar market.
This shift, from viewing failing as a setback to recognising it as an essential stage of innovation, represents a more profound transformation in leadership thinking. In fact, studies of African and Nigerian enterprises show that organisations which encourage experimentation and view mistakes as learning opportunities demonstrate higher long-term growth and adaptability. In other words, most organisations fail to harness the value of their setbacks. In other words, the majority waste their failings instead of harnessing them.
This article examines why setbacks are essential to innovation, how industries such as technology, healthcare, and finance have transformed crises into breakthroughs, and the practical frameworks leaders can adopt to “fail forward” and turn mistakes into momentum.
Why Failing Sparks Innovation
Failing stings because it challenges the very identity of organisations and leaders. However, from a strategic perspective, failing serves as an X-ray, revealing what is broken, where opportunities lie, and what must be reimagined.
Psychologist Carol Dweck’s growth mindset theory offers a powerful lens here. People and organisations that view abilities as easily managed are more likely to treat setbacks as learning opportunities rather than final verdicts. Applied to business, this mindset transforms mistakes into stepping stones.
History offers compelling proof. The accidental invention of 3M’s Post-it Notes arose when a scientist failed to create a strong adhesive but instead stumbled upon a weak one that became an iconic product.
Local research mirrors this insight. According to CBN’s Payments System Vision 2025, innovation thrives when organisations embrace experimentation, digital tools, and structured feedback loops. Nigerian innovation studies have also found that firms that embed experimentation into their culture achieve stronger performance than those that avoid risk. Startups that treat failing as feedback, such as Konga’s pivot from pure e-commerce to logistics or Flutterwave’s regulatory redesign after early setbacks, tend to emerge stronger. The lesson is clear. Innovation is not born of perfection but of persistence.
Industry Examples: When Setbacks Reshape Entire Sectors
- Technology, Konga and the Power of Pivoting: Konga, one of Nigeria’s early e-commerce pioneers, faced enormous operational and financial hurdles in its early years. Instead of folding, the company restructured its business model, expanded into logistics and payments, and redefined its place in the digital economy. What began as a struggle for survival became a lesson in strategic adaptation and market resilience.
- Healthcare: Theranos – The Ethics of Diagnostics: The Theranos scandal, built on false promises of revolutionary blood testing, shook global confidence in healthcare startups. Yet, its collapse spurred a wave of ethical, evidence-driven diagnostic companies. Failing, in this case, restored integrity and inspired sustainable innovation.
- Finance: Lehman Brothers – The Fintech Boom: The 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers devastated financial markets, but it also ignited one of the most transformative movements in finance: fintech. Out of distrust for traditional banking, companies like Stripe, Flutterwave, and Paystack emerged. A recent market report estimates the global fintech market at about $320.81 billion in 2025, with projections rising to $652.80 billion by 2030. In Nigeria, fintech firms process hundreds of billions of naira annually, and the e-payments ecosystem alone achieved ₦1.56 quadrillion in the first half of 2024 (Nigeria Payments Report 2025).
Together, these stories demonstrate that failing doesn’t just reset industries; it reshapes them.
Framework for Failing Forward: Turning Setbacks into Systems
So, how can leaders ensure that failing becomes fuel for innovation rather than wasted pain? The answer lies in adopting deliberate frameworks for “failing forward.”
1. Rigorous Analysis – Ask the 5 Whys: When things go wrong, it’s easy to stop at surface-level explanations or assign quick blame. However, effective leaders go deeper to understand the root cause of an issue. The 5 Whys technique is a simple yet powerful tool that helps uncover the underlying reasons why a problem occurred, rather than just what happened on the surface.
The process is straightforward: start with the problem and ask “Why?” up to five times, each time digging deeper until the underlying cause becomes clear. For example, if a product launch fails, the initial assumption might be that the marketing is poor. But by applying the 5 Whys, you may find the deeper reason lies in poor customer insight or skipped validation steps:
- Why did the product launch fail? → Sales were lower than expected.
- Why were sales lower? → Customers didn’t find it appealing.
- Why didn’t they find it appealing? → It didn’t meet their needs.
- Why didn’t it meet their needs? → The product design was based on assumptions.
- Why were assumptions made? → The validation phase was skipped to save time.
By the fifth “why,” the true cause surfaces: a lack of proper customer research due to time pressure, which points directly to what needs improvement. This kind of rigorous analysis ensures that problems are solved at the root, reducing repeated issues and strengthening overall performance.
1. Building a Safe Failing Culture: Amazon is famous for encouraging experimentation through its “fail fast” culture. The company institutionalises structured reviews of what went wrong without attaching stigma. This makes employees more willing to take intelligent risks.
2. Iterate Relentlessly: Netflix’s rise offers a case in point. The company faced significant challenges as a DVD rental service, competing against Blockbuster’s dominance. Instead of stagnating, it pivoted first to online streaming, then to original content. Each challenge became a data point for iteration.
3. Share Learnings Widely: Failings often become wasted when insights remain siloed. Research from Nigerian universities and digital transformation studies indicates that organisations with structured knowledge-sharing systems recover more quickly and adapt more effectively to crises. Building cross-departmental knowledge bases ensures lessons are captured, reused, and transformed into a strategic advantage.
By embedding these frameworks, organisations transform failing from chaos into a choreographed process.
Consulting’s Role: Turning Setbacks into Strategies
Even with the right mindset, many businesses struggle to operationalise “failing forward.” This is where consulting partners play a pivotal role. For instance, they may work with clients to:
- Leverage AI-driven analytics to detect failing patterns early, using predictive insights to avoid repeat mistakes.
- Facilitate structured post-mortems, guiding leadership teams to extract lessons systematically.
- Design resilience training programmes that build leaders’ capacity for change management, emotional intelligence, and adaptive strategy.
- Embed risk management frameworks into everyday decision-making, ensuring that failing sparks informed recalibration, not paralysis.
By combining human-centred approaches with data-driven tools, consulting helps organisations convert turbulence into traction.
Why Failing Forward Matters
In today’s volatile world, the ability to recover and adapt quickly is no longer optional. As innovation cycles accelerate, regulations become stricter, and global competition intensifies, companies that strive for perfection risk falling behind. Those who view failing as a learning opportunity are more likely to become leaders.
For Nigerian businesses, this reality is even more pressing. With vibrant startup ecosystems emerging in Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt, and with sectors like fintech, health tech, and agri-tech attracting significant investment, the capacity to respond to setbacks with agility and insight will increasingly determine long-term success.
The Courage to Fail Forward
At Phillips Consulting, we believe that failing, when approached with courage and structure, can become a catalyst for transformation. By fostering a growth mindset and leveraging our deep consulting expertise, we help organisations turn turbulence into opportunity, equipping teams to adapt, innovate, and thrive in a rapidly evolving business landscape.
Through our focus on technology capability development, digital transformation, leadership and change management, business continuity, and data-driven decision-making, we enable sustainable growth and resilience. From cybersecurity awareness to learning design and capacity building, our approach ensures that every misstep becomes a lesson, every disruption a breakthrough.
The question remains clear. Will your organisation fear failing, or will you fail forward and innovate your way into the future?
Written by:
Sonia Akawushim
DTC