Photo by Fachrizal Maulana on Unsplash

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In tech and creative spaces, we often hear failure talked about like it’s a badge of honor—something you collect on the road to success. There’s this myth that if you’re not failing, you’re not pushing hard enough. We see it in the stories of entrepreneurs who pivoted after a disaster or inventors who got it wrong a dozen times before they finally got it right. Failure is framed as essential, even inevitable. But is that the whole picture? Or are we romanticizing failure while ignoring the real-world pain it brings to people and organizations?

The Reality of Failure: It’s Not Pretty

Let’s get one thing straight: failure is messy. Sure, it’s part of the process, but that doesn’t mean it’s something to be celebrated in and of itself. Failure can break things—confidence, relationships, businesses. It can bring a level of stress that isn’t just a "learning experience" but a real, tangible hardship. We’ve all heard the saying, "Fail fast, fail often," but that’s easy to say when you’re not the one paying the price.

Behind every story of someone "failing forward" is often a lot of pain—financial losses, broken teams, or emotional burnout. In our rush to celebrate boldness and risk-taking, we sometimes gloss over these real consequences. The truth is, failure comes with a cost, and we can’t ignore that.

So, Is Failure Necessary?

Yes and no. There’s no doubt that innovation requires taking risks. If you’re going to try something new, you’re not going to get it right 100% of the time. But failure doesn’t have to be the goal. It’s just feedback—one step in the process. What matters is how you fail.

It’s not about glorifying the big, catastrophic failures. It’s about embracing smaller, controlled failures—iterations, experiments—that teaches us something without sinking the ship. One doesn't need to risk everything to learn; just need to learn early and often. Fail small, learn big.

The Ethics of Risk-Taking

Here’s where it gets interesting: Leaders have an ethical responsibility to think about the risks they are asking others to take. Telling people to "move fast and break things" sounds cool until something actually breaks—whether it’s a product, a business, or a person.

Encouraging risk-taking must come with reasonable risks. Are we setting people up to learn from failure or just setting them up to fail? Are we providing the support systems they’ll need if things don’t go as planned? Encouraging experimentation is great, but we need to be thoughtful about the consequences for everyone involved—teams, customers, investors, society.

Risk without responsibility is reckless. It’s on the leaders to strike that balance.

Failure’s True Role in Innovation

Let’s not get carried away with the idea that failure is some magical stepping stone to success. It’s just part of the process, not the destination. The goal isn’t to fail—it’s to learn, adapt, and keep moving forward.

Innovation isn’t about celebrating failure; it’s about celebrating resilience. It’s about being flexible, about being willing to pivot and try again when things don’t go as expected. The best innovations come not from failure itself, but from the ability to take failure in stride and come back stronger.

Failure isn’t the hero of the story—it’s just a side character. The real story is about how you respond to it, how you learn from it, and how you move forward.

Moving Beyond the Failure Fetish

The goal is growth, learning, and innovation. And that requires a mindset that’s open to risk, but also responsible. It’s about creating environments where people can experiment safely, where the lessons of failure don’t come at too high a cost.

So, let’s not romanticize failure. Let’s recognize it for what it is: feedback, not an endpoint. In the end, innovation is about vision, resilience, and making better decisions—whether you’re succeeding or failing along the way.