The Benefits of Failure and the Mouse Merchant

Start here A research student runs in: “Sir, the experiment didn’t work!” The professor smiles: “Good! Now you have a question to ask — why didn’t it work?” Failure is just information.

Prof. Prasanna’s points:

• Knowing what can go wrong while making a crispy dosa is as useful as knowing how to make it. The best recipe blogs list common mistakes and fixes.
• Software or a product is only as strong as its exception handling. Testers look for failure points (unit, integration, system, acceptance and stress testing) so they can be fixed.

Lecture example — the cake that became a pudding In a creativity class, 10 teams baked cakes. Many didn’t look like cakes. The teachers said, “Wow, you’ve made a nice pudding!” The teams cheered up. It was the same result, reframed.

Lecture example — grading from 100 Prof. Anand asked a new question about marking: instead of starting at 0 and adding marks, why not start at 100 (“every student deserves full marks”) and deduct for mistakes? It is the same work, but a more positive view, and the final marks may even differ.

This lecture is named after J. K. Rowling’s famous Harvard speech (2008), “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination”. Her main ideas:

• It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so carefully that you hardly live at all. And that is a failure too.
• Failure strips away what is not essential, so you can focus on what matters.
• Imagination lets us dream up a better future, and also lets us empathise with others.

This is an old Indian tale (from the Jataka tales): how a poor young man became rich by making the most of whatever he had.

The story in short:

1. A poor young man hears a wise man say that a smart person could build a fortune even from a dead mouse on the road.
2. He picks it up and sells it to a shopkeeper as food for a cat, earning one small coin.
3. With the coin he buys jaggery and offers jaggery and water to tired flower-pickers. They thank him with flowers, which he sells.
4. A storm wrecks a garden and leaves branches everywhere. He offers to clear it for free if he may keep the wood, then sells the wood.
5. He keeps spotting chances like these (for example, helping grass-cutters, then using their grass when a horse dealer comes to town), and step by step he becomes a rich merchant.

What the students and teachers took from it:

• “Where there is a will, there is a way.” (Anamika)
• Look at the positive side. If you only complain about misfortune, you stay stuck. Misfortune is temporary. (Anamika)
• Persistence and confidence: he must have faced failures too, but he kept going and grabbed opportunities. (Aniruddha)
• Spot hidden opportunities: the storm-damaged garden looked like a problem, but the wood was an opportunity. (Prof. Sivakumar)

Lecture example — COVID as an opportunity When COVID stopped in-person workshops, a friend of Prof. Kartic moved online. She saved hours of travel and met more clients, from all over the world. IIT Madras could also bring in alumni teachers from England and Singapore online, which wasn’t possible before. How we look at a situation matters more than the situation itself.

In one line: Treat failure as a stepping stone and information, and, like the mouse merchant, make the most of whatever you have. Exam words: fringe benefits of failure, J. K. Rowling, reframe, stepping stone, Edison, exception handling, imagination, Mouse Merchant, Jataka tale, opportunity in adversity, half full vs half empty.