failure dynamics

In a 2019 paper published in Nature titled ‘Quantifying the dynamics of failure across science, startups, and security’, Dr. Yian Yin and colleagues conducted a large-scale statistical analysis that revealed two major indicators of success:

The first indicator was the amount of time between consecutive failed attempts — teams who failed faster had better chances of succeeding.

The second indicator was the ability to learn from previous failures — teams that learned from past failures and made meaningful improvements in their subsequent attempts were also more likely to succeed.

There are three questions worth taking the time to address based on this:

How can you deploy/prototype your efforts more rapidly?

How can you consistently improve from one attempt to the next?

And, most important and foundational: how will you know that you’re doing any of these things?