Why failure matters
A blog by Lil Patuck, a member of the Frontier Tech Hub
Africa PlayPumps.
Four years ago, we wrote about failure as something to minimize. Today, we celebrate it as our most valuable asset.
Failure is an inevitable part of innovation. It’s a critical source of insight, and if you dig back far enough and you’ll find failure in the building blocks of every successful solution in the world. As Thomas Edison famously said, “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”
Today, in a world of cuts, embracing failure is more important than ever. We have learned from stories like One Laptop Per Child, Africa PlayPumps and the Dengvaxia rollout just how many millions can be sunk into shiny solutions that fall at basic hurdles with minimal room for pivoting.
“If you never fail, then you don’t learn.
And you’re probably not taking any risks.”
That’s why we test ideas on a small scale, with small amounts of funding. We validate the riskiest assumptions one by one, uncover blind spots and work with local partners to ensure an idea is deeply rooted in context. The Frontier Tech Hub intentionally operates at the earlier stages of innovation and supports a riskier space; bridging the gap between uncertain, promising ideas and scalable, impactful solutions.
From risk mitigation to risk embrace
In 2021 we took stock of our early exits. The intention was to learn from those failures and refine our approach to mitigate more in future. While we still see challenges around politically sensitive initiatives and contracting delays, our increased focus on partnering locally has helped bring critical contextual understanding to increase user buy-in and trust.
Today, our thinking has evolved to adopting a mindset which is more embracing of failure from the outset. This is part of the critical mindset shift that occurs when FCDO staff successfully become Pioneers - one which values learning, clarifying and demystifying over being right (or at least, getting it right first try).
Our methodology is based on Lean Impact, which doesn’t “do failure.” In other words: if an idea doesn't work, that’s still a win because now we know not to waste more resources on it. Every idea has potential to fail, but the sooner reality contradicts your plan, the sooner you can make a better one.
“I used to spend time being ‘ready to be ready’. I now approach parts of my daily work thinking: how can I test things on a very small scale to see if it makes sense to continue devoting time to it?”
In 2021 we wrote about failure as a necessary evil. Today, on the brink of our tenth cohort, we harness failure as one of innovation’s most strategic assets: something to anticipate and celebrate, not merely mitigate.
How failure informs portfolio intelligence
Since 2021, more pilots have exited. Of our last cohort, 3 of 16 closed early due to a decreasing strategic fit with FCDO objectives and assumptions being disproven. But zoom out to our full decade of work, and a different story emerges.
If we were to measure success traditionally (by scaling and reaching more users) then 88% of our pilots would be labelled as "failures." Only an estimated 12% have scaled or are clearly on the journey to scale, with Ampersand, a 2018 pilot, taking the top spot. It scaled its e-moto battery swapping model in Rwanda and raised $21.5m in 2023 to expand into Kenya.
But innovation programs operate in a fundamentally different space than traditional government interventions. We're testing uncertain ideas with high potential impact, where the primary value often lies not in the final outcome, but in the learning generated along the way.
When we shift the lens to measure learning quality (how effectively pilots engage real users, generate evidence, make data-driven decisions, and disseminate insights) the picture transforms completely. Between 60% and 80% of our pilots consistently achieve "high" scores on our learning scorecards.
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The same cohort tells two entirely different stories depending on how we define success. The e-mobility pilot Ampersand is one of only 12% of pilots which have scaled, but amongst 80% of pilots generating robust evidence about what does and doesn’t work, it is one of multiple pilots contributing to broader learning that can inform policy, funding, and further develop the e-mobility sector in LMICs.
Each of these pilots, regardless of whether they scaled, contributes to our growing evidence base on what works in frontier technology applications for development. This knowledge doesn't disappear when a pilot closes - it becomes an asset for future innovators to build upon.
Why this matters more than ever
In an era of budget constraints and heightened scrutiny over public spending, betting big on solutions that look promising on paper is a luxury the world can't afford. History’s spectacular failures serve as expensive reminders of what happens when we skip the messy, uncomfortable work of failing small and learning fast.
A portfolio approach ensures that we're not wasting public money on failed projects, as up to 80% of our pilots generate high-quality learning that helps build an evidence base, preventing future expensive mistakes and identifying the rare solutions worth major investment. Every "failed" pilot that saves the sector from a costly misstep has delivered return on investment.
This is innovation accountability for the age of austerity: rigorous, evidence-driven, and ruthlessly focused on learning rather than hoping.
In our next piece, we'll delve into five stories of failure from pilots themselves, to show you what smart learning and pivoting looks like in reality.
If you’d like to dig in further…
