Failing with a smile: The power of a positive attitude in innovation

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When it comes to innovation, success can be seductive, but failure is foundational. Breakthroughs break through failed attempts to solve the problem. Fires that wreak destruction on forests are the handmaiden to new growth. Almost all the products you consume at home, build at work, or leverage to provide essential services to others, come to you as the most current result of an ongoing experiment in the conversion of failure into positive outcomes.

Hundreds of failed filaments and busted bulbs lined the work benches of General Electric before the figurative light bulb lit above the inventors’ heads and then literally illuminated our own. Hundreds of people willingly decided to entertain their great-great-grandchildren by taking on the future role as “those idiots” in YouTube videos displaying failed attempts at flight before those bicycle makers from Dayton, Ohio, locked in on the successful formula to lift wood and cloth into the realm of wing and cloud.

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The journey from failure to innovation has an offramp, of course. It’s the road trip from failure to finality. There are many factors out of your control that may impact which journey you will take, whether you fall and get back up, or wreck and wash out. The biggest factor within your control is your own attitude in the face of failure, particularly a positive, professional attitude that looks at your failures as a launchpad for lessons learned rather than a diving board into a pool of pessimism, a permission structure to give up. It is for that reason that a positive attitude is a power skill that is necessary to impactful innovation.

What is a positive attitude?

In this space back in 2023, we discussed the power skill of a positive attitude from the perspective of working on or leading a team. In that article, we outlined a positive attitude as demonstrating traits such as:

• Focusing on the achievable;
• Seeking lessons from past mistakes;
• Meeting teammates where they are;
• Looking for opportunities to provide support; and
• Acting proactively in the face of challenges.

These are all specific, observable traits. Positive, professional attitudes also have an emotional component to them that is harder to quantify, but easier to embrace. You feel an infectious sense of mission when you interact with someone that has a positive attitude. You end meetings with a smile on your face and faith that the objective, whatever it is, will be achieved. 

How does a positive attitude impact innovation?

Innovators walking down the road to solve the problem they’ve discovered often  (brace yourself before hitting play). Maintaining a positive attitude through the valley of the rakes pays off well, though.

A recent paper from researchers at the Beijing Institute of Technology’s School of Management and Economics discussed the impact that of a respectful environment  enabled by a positive attitude. It creates a space that makes employees “more optimistic, confident, and energetic, which could help strengthen their personal skills in the short term, as well as their intellectual capacity in the long term.”

The pursuit for “sustainable innovation,” as the authors put it, “requires employees to be active, willing to learn, and able to put what they have learned and created into work. Accordingly, thriving at work echoes the need for sustainable innovation. Thus, we take thriving at work as the mediator in the influence mechanism of employees’ perceived respect on innovative behavior.” In other words, demonstrating respect for employees through a positive attitude makes them more likely to exhibit the behaviors needed to generate sustainable innovation at your organization.

Yomna Sameer, Ph.D., explores how exhibiting the traits of a positive attitude impacts innovation in her journal article “Innovative behavior and psychological capital: Does positivity make any difference?”through the HERO paradigm, HERO standing for:

• Hope
• Efficacy
• Resilience
• Optimism

When it comes to hope, Sameer concludes that “since innovative behavior consists of opportunity exploration, which is mainly about identifying new opportunities, it is likely to assume that individuals who are hopeful are more likely to be innovative as they generate pathways to their desired goals”

Regarding efficacy, Sameer discusses that “people who are more self-efficacious are more likely to take risks whereby risk-orientation was identified as a main factor affecting the implementation of novel ideas. Thus, it is likely to assume that self-efficacy is related to innovative behavior”

Exploring resilience, Sameer reminds us that “resilience is characterized by proactive responses in the face of failure or even great success. From this link, I can conclude that individuals that are more resilient are more likely to be innovative as they are more likely to take risks and are more willing to accept change.”

As far as optimism is concerned, Sameer explains that“optimists are likely to produce new ideas since they have positive expectations about the success of their ideas.”

Be a HERO and drive innovation

Telling someone to “be more optimistic” is a bit like telling someone to “be more funny.”  It’s a personality realignment mandate that doesn’t give the recipient of this pithy advice a pathway to achieving the goal. So, let’s explore some concrete steps you can take to improve your ability to employ a positive attitude at your place of employment. KH Kim, Ph.D., professor of creativity and innovation at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va., provides great advice in her article “Want to Innovate? Science Says, ‘Be Optimistic!’”

Talking about “seeing the positive in life”, Kim recommends to:

• Find reasons to focus on the good — by noticing little snapshots of kindness that you find yourself and others doing — instead of longing for a big picture of happiness (that’ll eventually emerge).
• Keep lists of problems to look back at later and discover how many seemingly impossible problems actually got solved.
• Start the day with clear, positive thinking; look in the mirror and say out loud, "Today is the first day of the rest of my life — one day closer to accomplishing my dreams.”
• Write down a statement that describes the way you wish to see the world (e.g., “Nothing is impossible”) and hang it somewhere you’ll always see it.

Explaining steps to “appreciate the little things and express gratitude”, Kim recommends that people:

• Cherish the reality of today more than the promise of tomorrow, find beauty in every moment and communicate this appreciation to others every day.
• Imagine a positive future, develop close relationships and express gratitude  verbally, in writing, or through actions.
• Learn to say thanks, freely give compliments and accept compliments gracefully.

   When looking at how to “handle negativity, when necessary” Kim tells us to:

• Reduce gossip, sarcasm, negative news and intake or discussion of media through TV, the Internet, newspaper and radio because the media often fosters negativity.
• Learn how to interact effectively with people who trigger negative emotions. Ttry clearly stating you don’t appreciate negativity and don’t overreact to negative comments.
• When something makes you unhappy, spend time alone to figure out what you can and can't change and then communicate your thoughts with people you trust.

Finally, Dr. Kim guides us through the difficult act of how to “accept your mistakes and learn from them.”

• Don’t be upset or frustrated when you make a mistake or fail. Instead, close your eyes and imagine (for a moment) a place or circumstance that makes you happy.
• Forgive yourself for things that you regret or can’t control and forgive others for everything.
• Don’t trap yourself into feeling responsible for others’ well-being. Recognize and free yourself from situations and relationships that are against your values or make you feel unhappy.

A realist’s view on a positive attitude’s impact on innovation

Niccolo Machiavelli was a brutal human being with a world-weary view on the corridors of power and how to dominate them.  But he was also someone who was resilient in his embrace of innovation, at least within the space of statecraft. This quote from his most renown work, The Prince, might betray that somewhere in Machiavelli’s conniving heart was a touch of a positive attitude when it comes to the importance of resiliency in the soul of innovators.

“It ought to be remembered”, Machiavelli wrote, “that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them.”

Keep this centuries-old perspective close as, in the pursuit of the new, you keep walking with a smile on your face and positive attitude in your step ... into the next rake.

Adam Bazer, MPD, senior director of knowledge product development at the American Society for Health Care Engineering.