Keynote speech for Hult Prize social entrepreneurship finalists at Impact Hub San Francisco on March 9, 2014. Video of the talk is at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vez81f8SS2E

1. How to Fail Gloriously
Successfully
Eugene Eric Kim
March 9, 2014
San Francisco, CA

2. My Qualifications?
• Founded two collaboration
consultancies: Blue Oxen
Associates and Groupaya
• More horror stories than you can
count, including failing at failing
• Experimenting with ways to scale
collaborative literacy. Most
haven’t worked.
• Lots of lessons learned at
fasterthan20.com
• Good at asking why

3. What are your
qualifications?
Think of a story where you were
successful at overcoming adversity.
Now think of a story where you
failed magnificently.

4. Why do we care
about failing?

5. We don’t. We care about
solving hard problems.

6. Solving hard problems
requires that we be
good at learning.

7. This kind of learning is
messy and hard.

8. How can we fail
successfully?

9. 1. Be real
2. Feel
3. Practice

10. 1. Be real
2. Feel
3. Practice

11. It is not a badge of
honor to fail.
It’s a badge of honor
to learn.

12. Failure as a Success Metric
…
…
Something unexpected went wrong
We learned from a previous mistake
…
…

13. Be Precise About
Failure
Failure
Minimum
Success
Target
Success
Epic
Success!

14. 1. Be real
2. Feel
3. Practice

15. “Joyful” Funerals?!
Aligning
what you
say with
how you
actually
feel.

16. Be nice to yourself.
Seriously!

17. 1. Be real
2. Feel
3. Practice

18. Practice
Falling!

19. “Fall down.
Make a mess.
Break something occasionally.
Know that your mistakes are your own
unique way of getting to where you need
to be.
And remember that the story is never
over.”
—Conan O’Brien,
2000 Harvard Commencement Speech

20. Thank you!
Eugene Eric Kim
eekim@fasterthan20.com
Twitter: @eekim
Drawings by Amy Wu of words & design.
Cute nephews courtesy of my sister and
brother-in-law.
Some rights reserved. CC BY 4.0