Brilliant Mistakes: Finding Success on the Far Side of Failure

If you have ever flown in an airplane, used electricity from a nuclear power plant, or taken an antibiotic, you have benefited from a brilliant mistake. Each of these life-changing innovations was the result of many missteps and an occasional brilliant insight that turned a mistake into a surprising portal of discovery. There are countless books that tell you how to avoid mistakes. Now, in Brilliant Mistakes, Paul Schoemaker, founder and chairman of Decision Strategies International, shares critical insights on the surprising benefits of making well-chosen mistakes.

 Brilliant Mistakes explores:

• Why minimizing mistakes may be the greatest mistake of all
• Situations when mistakes are most beneficial and when they should be  avoided
• The counter-intuitive idea that we should deliberately permit errors at times
• How to make the most of “brilliant” mistakes to improve business results

Brilliant Mistakes is based on solid academic research and insights from Paul’s work with more than 100 organizations, as well as his provocative Harvard Business Review article (with Robert Gunther) “The Wisdom of Deliberate Mistakes.” Paul provides a practical roadmap for using mistakes to accelerate learning for your organization and yourself.

Praise for Brilliant Mistakes 

“A roadmap for using business failures to generate path-breaking innovations…. Schoemaker presents broad and deep perspectives on why mistakes remain underutilized portals of discovery in most organizations. Although it may disrupt your mental models, this engaging, wide-ranging, and innovative book is a must-read.”
—Clayton Christensen, Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration, Harvard University, author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, The Innovator’s Prescription, and The Innovator’s Solution

“All of us, from educators to CEOs, will profit from taking to heart Schoemaker’s messages—this book is both brilliant and fun to read.”
—John Seely Brown, Co-Chair, Deloitte Center for the Edge, Visiting Scholar & Advisor to the Provost, University of Southern California; Coauthor, The Power of Pull and A New Culture of Learning

“In Brilliant Mistakes, Schoemaker brilliantly pulls off a tricky three-way balance: a solid grounding in behavioral and managerial research, engaging and entertaining examples from many endeavors (business, sports, physics, medicine, music, art, literature), and clear and concrete recommendations for how to make the right kind of mistakes and how to extract the gold that’s in them.”
—Joshua Klayman, Founding Partner, Humanly Possible, Inc.; Professor Emeritus of Behavioral Science, University of Chicago Booth School of Business

“Elegantly combining stories, personal insights, and practical models, Schoemaker offers both notable inspiration and fine guidance to those in pursuit of true innovation. Not reading this book will be a mistake—and not a brilliant one!”
—Carsten Bjerg, CEO, Grundfos, Denmark

“Brilliant Mistakes tackles the hardest stage of the innovation process, namely challenging the current business model and seeing opportunities before others do (box 3 in my terminology).”
—Vijay Govindarajan, Professor at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, Coauthor of Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators and The Other Side of Innovation

“This is a must-read for anyone seeking both perfection and innovation; short-term performance and long-term learning; the pride of excellence and the humility to make deliberate mistakes; and the tolerance for many dumb mistakes to produce a few brilliant ones.”
—Steve Bonner, President and CEO, Cancer Treatment Centers of America

“Essential.…With his customary wit and analytic sharpness,  Paul Schoemaker explains how to identify and encourage  the sort of high-risk, high-return ‘mistakes’ that can open up new markets, create strategic opportunities, and invigorate organizations.”
—Michael Mandel, Chief Economic Strategist, Progressive Policy Institute, and Former Chief Economist, Business Week

“Mining mistakes often yields great value immediately, but more importantly, it will change your company’s culture to embrace innovation and risk taking over the long run.”
—F. Mark Gumz, Retired President and C.E.O. Olympus Corporation of the Americas

“Brilliant Mistakes offers a creative and practical road map for designing for and learning from mistakes.”
—Yoram (Jerry) Wind, Lauder Professor, Director of SEI Center for Advanced Studies in Management, Academic Director of The Wharton Fellows Program, The Wharton School; Coauthor of The Power of Impossible Thinking

“In intriguing style—and with examples from many fields—Paul Schoemaker shows not only how to profit from mistakes but also what kinds of mistakes can lead to better learning and innovation.…A great read. Bravo!”
—Robin M. Hogarth, ICREA Research Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, author of Educating Intuition, Judgement and Choice, and Dance with Chance

“Schoemaker lays the foundation for corporations to fundamentally alter their DNA by teaching us how to reframe our thinking about mistakes by making them a part of our accepted ‘rules of engagement’.…A DIY handbook for every leader seeking to make a difference.”
—Govi Rao, CEO, Noveda

“An utterly brilliant book… Kudos to Schoemaker for highlighting such an important aspect of creating value from unexpected outcomes! It is a must-read for every researcher and innovation leader in every organization.”
—Larry Huston, CEO, 4iNNO, and Former Innovation Officer, Procter & Gamble

Paul J. H. Schoemaker, PhD

Paul J. H. Schoemaker, PhD, is founder and executive chairman of Decision Strategies International, Inc., a consulting and training firm specializing in adaptive strategic management, executive development, and technology-based tool development. He is also research director of the Mack Center for Technological Innovation at the Wharton School where he often teams up with executives to tackle frontier challenges in innovation and strategy. He has been a professor for many years at the University of Chicago and the Wharton School, and he worked in Royal Dutch/Shell’s planning group in London to help refine their famed scenario-planning approach.

Paul has advised more than 100 organizations around the world and serves as board chairman of three companies (one based in Europe). He is coauthor (with J. Edward Russo) of Decision Traps and Winning Decisions, which jointly sold more than 100,000 copies. He is also author of Profiting from Uncertainty, Peripheral Vision (with George Day), and Chips, Clones and Living Beyond 100 (with Joyce Schoemaker). Paul has written over 100 academic and applied papers, in such journals as the Harvard Business Review, Journal of Mathematical Psychology, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Management Science, and The Journal of Economic Literature.