When 3M was trying to develop a new, strong adhesive, someone made a mistake and produced a glue that was less adhesive than usual. When you stuck things together with it, they just peeled apart. So was that a useless, hopeless, idiotic mistake? No, it was the origin of the Post-it® Note.
Alexander Fleming was having trouble cultivating bacteria in a petri dish because a particular mould had a habit of growing alongside the bacteria and destroying them. A frustrating mistake that kept ruining his experiments? Nope – when he decided to study the ‘mistake’ more closely, the mould turned out to have a use after all. He called it penicillin.
One of the biggest bars to being creative is that we’re afraid to make mistakes. ...