Thomas Edison once said “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” If you agree with that, you’ll love this edition of Waterproof, where we speak with people who learned to ‘Fail Forward’.
We start with Esther Shaylor of UNICEF and the WASH Failure Movement, who talks about the little jerrycan that couldn’t. Zahid Amin Shashoto of Bangladesh’s Uttaran shares the story of well-meant, high-tech water solutions that had unexpected consequences. Lindsey Schwidder of the experimental Green Village in Delft explains that sometimes you need to get wrapped up in red tape to learn how to get free of it the next time around. And Mr. Water himself, Henk Ovink, who says, like Edison, failure is about learning, even between nations. Failing Forward...in this 11th edition of Waterproof.
QUOTES
Esther Shaylor – UNICEF
“We really want to talk about failure. We want to talk about when things go wrong and we want to openly and freely share it so that we can learn from it.”
Zahid Amin Shashoto – Uttaran
“People cannot make a living. My community is primarily farmers, and if farmers doesn't have farmland, it's underwater, they go out”
Lindsey Schwidder – Green Village
“For us it's interesting to look at things that are new, that are not yet applied or not yet validated. And here they are also allowed to fail.”
Henk Ovink – Global Commission on the Economics of Water
“A lot of things go wrong before things really go right. Learning - that is exactly what failure is about.”
Netherlands