Embracing mistakes isn’t something I ever expected to enjoy, but the transformative journey at Ivey Business School has changed my perspective that perfection is the key to success. I’ve realized that solving business problems creatively often means thinking like kids—curious, playful, and unafraid to fail. If someone had told me six months ago that Ivey Business School—a global leader in case-based learning—would encourage me to embrace failure and unleash the kid in me, I would have laughed. Yet here I am, experimenting, exploring, making a mess, and finding joy in every step of the process.
A shift in perspective: Learning to fail and grow
Throughout my life, I was asked, taught, and trained to get things right—every time. But in the Design Driven Innovation course, Prof. Dr. Daniel Clark gave me the space to see that it's not just about getting things right. It's also about trying, failing, and learning along the way.
Even though we’ve all heard the saying,“Failure is the stepping stone to success,” how often do we really appreciate someone who puts in the effort but fails? The truth is, we tend to celebrate success and overlook the value of attempts that didn’t go perfectly. But without those attempts—without failure—real learning never happens.
The problem with perfection: How fear of failure blocks creativity
From childhood, we’ve been taught to focus on getting the right answer, following rules, and sticking to frameworks. There’s little room to experiment, and because of that, we grow afraid of making mistakes. This pressure to avoid failure blocks us from exploring freely and keeps us focused on finding the “right” way rather than discovering new possibilities. It’s like our creativity gets boxed into a step-by-step manual with no space for detours or playful ideas.
Contrastingly in the Design Driven Innovation course at Ivey, we embraced the joy of making mistakes. Thanks to our professor’s guidance, we designed the worst water bottle possible for a client, tested different types of paper airplanes (some never made it off the ground), and built a spaghetti tower.
Our first in-class project challenged us to do the unexpected: design the worst possible prototype—a deliberate mistake. We brainstormed how to make the most impractical, dysfunctional water bottle for a specific client. This was both surprising and liberating. I never imagined feeling proud of making mistakes in a business school! We’re always told to learn from mistakes, but we spend so much time avoiding them. So where does real learning come from if we never let ourselves fail?
Lessons from kids: Building the spaghetti tower
Another fascinating activity involved building a spaghetti tower with limited supplies in just 15 minutes. Before we started, the professor shared a surprising fact: the average tower height built by kids is around 30 inches, while business school students usually manage only 20 inches. We couldn’t stop laughing—how could kids outdo us? Then, the professor said he’d help us reach the kids’ league of 30 inches.
So, we decided to replicate what kids would do. When you give a kid something new to play with, they don’t overthink it. They dive right in—stacking things, knocking them over, laughing, and trying again. They aren’t worried about getting it right the first time; they just explore. We followed that same mindset: think, explore, and play. For the first five minutes, we sketched different models of the tower individually. Then, as a team, we explored the mock supplies, experimenting with their characteristics, trying different structures, and making mistakes along the way. It was messy, chaotic, and fun. When the time came to use the real supplies, we built a 32.4-inch tower—in just 15 minutes!
The Real Magic: Trying, Failing, and Growing
This experience taught me an important lesson: It’s not about getting it right at the first attempt or every time, but about valuing the effort—even when things go wrong. Mistakes are part of the process, not the end of it. And when we embrace failure as a step in learning, we unlock creativity and open ourselves to new possibilities. Whether we’re building towers, flying paper planes, or designing water bottles, the real magic happens when we tap into our inner child and give ourselves permission to try, fail, and grow.