Having been a student within the Indian education system who has transformed into a teacher within the US education system, a frequent question I’m asked by friends and relations is: “Can you contrast the two systems?” My answer is that the greatest differentiating factor is the attitude towards failure of the two systems.
As was so well highlighted in Rajkumar Hirani’s popular feature film, 3 Idiots, the education system in India tends to create fear of failure which discourages experimentation and innovation. Yet, examples abound of Indians succeeding as entrepreneurs in India, the US and all over the world. How do they succeed despite being products of an education system that discourages innovation? The answer is that despite the education system, they confronted the prospect of failure with the right attitude and spirit.
I’ve coined two terms to describe people confronted with failure: those with the Type 1 mindset, and people of Type 2 mindset.
The Type 1 mindset individual is fearful of making mistakes. This mindset characterises most individuals, managers, and contemporary corporations. For Type 1 people, to fail is a matter of shame and pain. Therefore, under this line of thinking the brain becomes risk averse. For such people, innovation is gradual, circumspect and increm-ental. Don’t expect off-the-chart results or outcomes from Type 1 mindset individuals.
On the other hand if at all the Type 2 mindset indivi-dual is fearful, she is afraid of losing opportunities. For Type 2 people it is shameful to be sitting on the sidelines while someone else runs away with a great idea. For them failure is not bad; it can actually be exciting. They are aware that from so-called ‘failures’ come the next big ideas, killer apps and great innovations.
For the growth and development of all societies, an overwhelming Type 1 mindset population is a disadvantage. So how to enable people to transform from Type 1 into Type 2 individuals?
One approach is to engage groups in rapid prototyping –– a process under which they brainstorm wild new ideas, and quickly develop physical models or mock-ups of solutions. Rapid prototyping infuses the brain with richer inputs which allow people to move quickly from the abstract to the concrete, and enables them to visualise the outcome of their ideas.
But since all prototypes don’t produce the best or final solutions, rapid prototyping also teaches that failure is actually a necessary part of the process. You may chuck an idea and say, “Let’s try something else,” but you keep moving in a positive way. This whips the brain into associating ‘failure’ with pleasure.
Another way to transform people into Type 2 mindset individuals is by paradoxically instilling a sense of ‘desperation’ in them. This is done by cutting input resources so they are forced to devise new solutions — necessity is the mother of invention.
In India, where there are severe input resource shortages, the practice of jugaad has become part of the business management lexicon. It forces business entrepreneurs to become inventive to manage the scarcity of resources that is part of the landscape. Anheuser-Busch InBev — the successful beer company — stimulates a type of ‘jugaad’ mentality within its marketing teams by cutting advertising budgets while setting higher sales targets. Driven to desperation, the company’s marketers are spurred to devise new ways of communicating with consumers.
Many corporations try to use the opposite of desperation — inspiration — to stimulate innovation. It sounds good, but seldom works. Often, stimulating inspiration requires placing a pool of Type 2 individuals in a closed environment where they are given licence to prototype. But then they usually end up presenting their ideas to fearful Type 1 managers who shoot them down.
To make inspiration work as a motivator, it might be useful to follow the example of IT major Cisco Systems. There, Type 2 mindset personnel are given the space and support to experiment and prototype. But they must have someone from senior management on their teams. By getting such managers involved in the process, innovators have a champion who can navigate the corporation’s political system and sell their ideas.
The ideas listed above need to be incorporated into India’s education system. For example, more schools should incorporate rapid prototyping into the curriculum and pedagogy as a way to encourage Type 2 thinking. In my Frinky Science of the Human Mind course at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, students use this technique to apply the principles of the functioning of the human brain to figure out how customers can be made to feel comfortable with their buying experience and choose one product over another.
The bottom line is that failure is not disgraceful. The sooner educational institutions in India realise this, the quicker they will be on the road to producing the talent that is needed for breakthrough thinking and innovations.
(Baba Shiv is Sanwa Bank professor of marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business Management, USA)