Innovating in Ireland: Can we fail better?

The Innovating in Ireland. Can we fail better report explores the extent to which the Irish innovation ecosystem allows space to fail at innovation and to learn from such failures.

Most people conflate failure with fault, and understandably few individuals or organisations publicise their failures. However, learning from failure is thought to be far more valuable than learning from success, and the magnitude of failure significantly determines how well lessons will be learned.

In Ireland, one in every ten Irish businesses abandon or suspend an innovation project. However, we know very little about these failures in terms of decision processes or lessons learnt.

Supported by the Irish Research Council, a small roundtable took place with a diverse group of key stakeholders with considerable and varied experience of the Irish and global innovation ecosystems. This report provides an overview of their perception of innovation failure and what failure means for individuals and businesses in an Irish context. It is a first step in understanding innovation failure in Ireland, and how to support learning from innovation failure at the individual, firm and national level.

This report was authored by Dr. Jane Bourke, Conor O’Driscoll, Josh O’Driscoll and Dr. Paidi O’Reilly.