Failure Lab Is…

  • A call to become a more thoughtful and empathic human.

  • A reminder that the journey to success is a continuous journey and never a straight path.

  • An invitation to connection through shared human experience.

  • A challenge to develop the skills necessary to become more comfortable being uncomfortable, to embrace continuous growth, and to dive into the sticky complicated experience of being a human that interacts with other humans. 

The Failure Lab Origin Story 

In 2012, Failure Lab was born as a storytelling event experience. A Failure Lab story features a successful individual who is willing to courageously share a candid story of personal failure.

The willingness of a Failure Lab storyteller to publicly share their failure story is inherently a groundbreaking display of bravery and vulnerability. It flies in the face of the “Instagram-culture” and “highlight reel” public personas of modern social-media-saturated life. Failure Lab is the makeup-free selfie of the storytelling world. It is the Pinterest-fail of sharing.

The unique differentiator of Failure Lab is this - Failure Lab invites the audience into the failure stories of successful people by deliberately not sharing the lessons learned, the morals discovered, the eventual triumphs achieved. 

Following each story, audience members are given time to reflect and share what the story means to them - how they connected to it - how it sparked emotion in them. So instead of getting 2-3 lessons from the storyteller, you have the potential to get hundreds or thousands of lessons, reflections, questions, and messages of support and empathy. 

Since the first event in 2012, there have been Failure Lab events all over the United States and as far away as India and Australia.

We attribute the consistent impact and success of the events to the unique blend of local community storytelling, the power of real human interaction, and the specific structure of the Failure Lab Story Formula and event format.     


THE EVOLUTION OF FAILURE LAB

Failure Lab has evolved to offer a full menu of corporate engagement & training experiences. 

  • EVENTS: Organizations utilize our edgy & compelling event platform to do things like:

  • Engage & connect teams

  • Kick off culture & training initiatives

  • Humanize leadership

  • Normalize failure & iteration in the creative process

  • Combat cultures of fear

  • Host engaging community & partner events

  • TRAINING: The Failure Lab training curriculum is centered around the nuanced & difficult behavioral skills necessary to become an effective human interacting with other humans. Organizations partner with Failure Lab to address topics such as:

  • The human component of leadership & management development. Being a great leader is much more than managing processes.

  • Developing the emotional intelligence skills necessary for a maximized organization

  • Improving the connection & cohesiveness of teams

  • Understanding team drivers & roadblocks

  • Laying the groundwork for psychologically safe workspaces & team culture

  • Improving processes of creative ideation, innovation, & efficiency

  • Working through the discomfort of change & uncertainty

  • Uncovering, diagnosing, & improving interpersonal communication patterns & work styles

  • Supporting & cultivating minority leadership groups (ie: Women, Leaders of Color, etc.)


Do any of these use cases ring true for you and/or your organization? Reach out! We would love to talk about how Failure Lab can help bring perspective & tools to your work.