Facing Failure and the Museum Dedicated to It

Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about:

• Why failure is part of the hidden curriculum
• Why you can’t be creative or innovative without failing [sometimes a lot]
• How to learn from it, instead of sweeping it under the rug
• A failure our guest and our host each faced
• A discussion of the Museum of Failure

Our guest is: Dr. Samuel West, a licensed psychologist (cognitive behavioral therapy) with a PhD in Organizational Psychology. His research focuses on creating climates for innovation by encouraging experimentation and exploration. In 2017 he founded the Museum of Failure showcasing over a 100 innovation failures from around the world. The aim of the museum is to stimulate productive discussions about the important role of failure for innovation and to increase organizational acceptance of failure.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the co-creator and co-producer of the Academic Life. She previously worked in Museum Education at a small museum in New York; and as a PhD student worked for a professor who was a Smithsonian curator.

Listeners to this episode might also be interested in:

• The Museum of Failure
• The Museum of Broken Relationships
• The remote control referred to in this podcast
• The marshmallow candy referred to in this podcast
• TedTalk on Failing “Mindfully”
• Podcast on fear and failure
• Podcast on the role of failure in student success
• Failosophy: A Handbook for When Things Go Wrong, by Elizabeth Day
• Dr. Manu Kapur’s work on Productive Failure

You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island and neither are we. We reach across our mentor network to bring you experts about everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring on an expert about something? DM us on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN.

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