Incentivizing failure works for business, not education


Some companies have begun to reward employees for the unthinkable: failure.

Could this approach be beneficial in academics? Giving credit for failure in certain situations is worth trying in business, but it does not lead to positive outcomes in other fields — specifically academics.

In college education, the penalty for making mistakes is very severe. Grades, GPAs and order of merit are viewed as critical to our future, but the need to give grades means little to no tolerance for mistakes.

At USC, the freedom to make mistakes is limited by the need for high grades. In most classes, students do not get opportunities to correct or re-submit papers.

Moreover, the “extra credit” policy, a controversial approach, allows students to make mistakes, as long as they understand they will need to do the extra work to demonstrate they are achieving desired learning outcomes.

But some would argue such a policy might encourage laziness and careless work, and extra credit means those bright and hard-working students no longer have the opportunity to stand out. This is not quite the case in the business world.

The Wall Street Journal reports a growing number of companies are giving employees rewards for making mistakes and taking edgy risks, a bold move long overdue.

Clearly, however, goals in education are different from the ones in business, and what might work well in an advertising agency does not make much sense at USC.

Choosing to reward failure or risk at school does not mean policy should be adjusted to reward sloppy, careless work reflective of indifference, lack of preparation or inability to handle the demanding work of getting a solid education.

As students, we are always being reminded we will soon enter the working world.

It is incongruent to be punished for taking risks in education, only to be rewarded for them in our future careers.

The WSJ reported an example of risk reward from Grey, an advertising agency. Tor Myhren, the head of Grey’s New York office was worried fast growth was not matched by a consistent source of creative ideas.

His response was to hand out “heroic failure” rewards — standardized trophies for people who take the best risks.

“Failure, and how companies deal with failure, is a very big part of innovation,” Judy Estrin, founder of seven high-tech companies and author of a book on innovation, told the WSJ.

In the business world, making mistakes because of a lack of hard work or laziness is bad; hiding mistakes is even worse.

If employees try something that was worth trying and fail,  however, and learn from their failures, then making mistakes is a good thing.

Employees become more motivated to work, which lowers the turnover rate and improves the integrity of the company in the long run.

Grey’s “heroic failure” rewards exemplify this idea and merit scholarly research and experimentation.

In education, however, taking risks could lead to worse results and could ruin one’s GPA.

In the current job environment, employees often feel afraid to fail.

Students feel the same way in their educational pursuits.

We should be wary in rewarding failure and should take a definitive stance on how we want to incentivize risk.

 

Emily Wang is a sophomore majoring in business administration.