They've all these left brain voices, these things that we should be, that we've been programmed with over our entire life span, that, in improv, we want to beat down and encourage people to let go of so that they can start taking risks and play in that place where failure is gonna happen.

All in all, failure just isn't failure. It's the not trying that's the real failure.

It's not that I wanted to fail, but it was just part of becoming who I am.

So like any kid right out of school, I thought "Well, I'll just take tomorrow off."

That was an early lesson to me, in that you can still fail in things, and its not even really your fault. Sometimes its just a bad situation.

We will ... fail faster which will hopefully equip us to succeed better in the future.

We need to celebrate and allow what has gone before to fail, and embrace what is new, support it, give its credence, and let it flow into the market.

What's beautiful about the design movement in Africa is no one is telling them what's right or wrong

This whole design movement across the continent is frustrating some people and delighting others.

The brands that make people tick are the ones that tap into the emotional strings in a very very deep way.

Africa... it's unique and special, it's fantastic, it's wonderful and it is Africa

Dora the Explorer is to children's TV what Lionel Messi is to football, and she's a rockstar

We don't want to spend enough time on the ground or enough time immersing ourselves in somebody else's culture

Why are certain things not the way they are? So why are certain economies, why are certain societies not doing as well as we think they might do?

Being Irish in Africa is quite an interesting thing

Some cultures are just destined or set up historically to fail, and certainly, from where I come from, this is a narrative.

If you figure out what your big beautiful is, it helps you do stuff.

We treat failure as if it’s this place on the map — there'll be dragons. But if you step over there, it’s not that bad.

Failure rips away this veneer of reality.

You have to develop your own rhythm.

A lot of people don't see the 'lean startup' methodology as a systematic way to fail.

If you don't feel uncomfortable then it's too late.

The truth is we need to encourage both the risk, and make sure we're following through with the support regardless of the outcome.

We lose as a community, and the risk-taker learns that they just shouldn't take the risk anymore.

If we're not in a position to learn from that failure quickly, learning end up dissipating and not happening at all. We end up losing out as a result of that.

And don't get me wrong, I applaud our desire to continue to encourage people who are making the attempt. It takes courage to take that risk. But what happens when they fall? Do we truly spend enough time helping them get back up?

My observation that is that most of this conversation is really about encouraging people to take the initial risk, because we know that will lead to success. But what about failure? I mean seriously, how to we stand to gain from that?

Depending upon the size of the risk and the degree of the fail, most people aren't equipped to immediately learn from that experience.

Sometimes the wrong idea is really the right idea at the wrong time. Or maybe it has something to do with not having enough time.

...but we fell short, and we ran out of money.

Actually, this international community convened in Vienna, and they talked about Grand Rapids as a place where great things could happen, and they said yes. That's freakin' awesome.

And as one does when they come across such a big personal realization, I gave the guys at Foo Camp a call on a Friday and said I couldn't make it. And on Monday, I quit my job.

Rick asked the really simple question - "hey, what would the opposite of a film festival be?" Out of that came a 10-slide keynote deck with the title "An Art Prize." And that was the beginning of ArtPrize.

And there was a lot of learning that went into that whole project and a lot of resources -- so we decided we were going to spend a fair amount of time and dissect all the things we had done wrong, and what we had an inkling was going right. We spent time to learn.

I don't really like the conversation I hear our community talking about around failure -- I believe that we're framing it incorrectly.

There’s a much better way to do what we do.

You can’t prevent failure at any level, it’s always going to happen.

I’m here today because of failure and perhaps in spite of failure.

Failure: what it means to you is ultimately the only thing that’s important.

We learn from failure, that's an obvious one.

Instead of thinking about doing, do stuff and think about doing.

Life is a place for doers, life is a place for experiments.

Whenever you are doing stuff, whenever you are trying something which no one has tried ever before you should be curious and you should analyse it.

The theme of this month is failure and that's slightly problematic because I haven't failed in anything in more than 15 years.

Failure only exists in doing, and has nothing to do with being.

People who avoid risks are rewarded with the safety they achieve. People who take the risks are rewarded with the adventures they have.

There is hope... that failure can be your friend, that you can change your relationship with failure if you want to.

If you're not failing, you're probably not taking risks.

Reframe success ... Success is not shared prestige, award or power, it's impact.

The what-ifs have to come from a point of tension. Otherwise you're not going to have the energy to execute.

How can I be less afraid to fail?

My equity is invested in myself.

Lo común no es el éxito, lo común es el fracaso. Fracasados ¡No están solos!

Otro gran beneficio que tiene hablar abiertamente del fracaso, es que nos permite ser más felices y ser más auténticos.

Failure is how you get humility. You can tell people who have failed... and you can tell people who pretend to be humble but haven't failed enough yet.

El éxito no es definitivo, y el fracaso no es fatal.

Una concepción erronea es : Fracaso=tristeza, Éxito=Felicidad

Fracaso no es igual a aprendizaje cuando nos dedicamos a buscar al culpable.

Los buenos no ganan siempre al final, a veces los buenos también perdemos.

Self understanding is so important when it comes to which part of the creative industry you’ll like to go into.

Stop making excuses & start making stuff.

What are 12+ things that make you unique?

Just start making stuff.

Our prisons aren't full of dangerous predators, whatever our politicians would like to tell us.

We have a culture that routinely laughs about prison rape.

Imprisonment in America, is a huge social experiment, and I argue that it's failed.

Prisoners are largely cast as "the other", I wanna convince people that prisoners are us and the prisons are ours. Prisons are part of our society so it's incumbent on us to care about how they function and to analyse and keep check if they're doing things well.

I wanna persuade people to care about this issue that's largely invisible.

If you are a black male born today, if trends continue, you have a one in four chance of being incarcerated in your lifetime. For white males, it's something like one in seventeen, one in eighteen.

It's unfortunate that it usually takes a near death experience to make us realize how valuable our time really is.

[Your time] is more valuable than money. It's something you can never get back.

If you really want to start a business or grow a project or fail less, it's important to recognize how valuable your time is.

I've failed a lot in my life. I've failed with haircuts, I've failed with businesses.

Growing up, I would always see my parents come home from their 9 to 5 jobs and it was never 9 to 5.. The lack of being around my parents really inspired me to be an entrepreneur, to work around my friends and family and make more time for the things that make me happy.

I argue in the mainstream media, (prisons) are fetishized and prisoners are largely cast as the other. I want to convince people that prisoners are us and the prisons are ours. Prisoners are a part of our society. And so it is incumbent on us to care about how they function, and to analyze and keep check if they’re doing things well.

Nature rewards total commitment.

Change is voluntary, 100%. If you don't want to do it, it's not gonna happen.

You can't force anybody, especially a grown man to do anything because you want them to, change is voluntary.

Don't get trapped in the routine.

If you wait for someone to create it for you, you will wait forever.

It takes a certain kind of person to actively seek out criticism. But those are the leaders and people that organizations need the most.

Find a small group of people who do care and stop comparing yourself.

90% of startups fail in the first two years often because they created something with all their resources and then go to marketing and go, "Ok, now market this." Then they find out nobody wanted the junk we created.

Small is the future big!

For young girls [children’s media] 80% of the time a career is presented to them, the career is "princess." It’s not really a great aspiration. You can’t go to "princess school" and it doesn’t seem like many real princesses are happy. I don't really want that for my daughter.

If a career is central to a protagonist’s story line, 80% of the time that person is male.

It can be really uncomfortable to work with someone who comes from a different background than you have, but you'll end up with a better product and the bottom line will be better.

The reality is if we keep up this status quo in the media, this huge gender gap left behind the scenes and on the screen, we're not gonna move the needle towards equal representation in congress, in the boardroom, in the C-suite, in the stem fields... Because if our young people are not seeing it, it's almost impossible for them to be "it".

En la escala de gravedad de las fallas, el error está poquito más arriba de lo que podría ser considerado un tropiezo, por debajo del fracaso y mucho más abajo de la tragedia, que tiene un sentido de irreversible.

El miedo a la muerte y el miedo al fracaso son una y la misma cosa, el miedo a dejar de ser lo que creemos que somos.

If you fail at something and you truly attempted it, it's still a success. You're just going to have to do it a few more times.

How I see creativity is that you're doing stuff and you're thinking about what you are doing.

Work is love made visible.

Don't just be a knowledge consumer. Be a knowledge producer.

School has the tendency to teach us to be consumers of knowledge.

We need to completely unlearn everything that school taught us about failure.

Just because I'm not traditionally creative doesn't mean I can't create.

It was pretty early on that I learned in school that I was totally uncreative.

I'm going to flip the idea of failure totally on it's head.

Negative reactions to failure prevent us from harnessing that productive potential that sits in our failure.

I am a girl who cannot make what I see in my mind.

The opposite of failure is open-mindedness.