ABSTRACT
As educators, we understand failure as an important part of the learning process. Do our students feel safe to fail or are they treading carefully to avoid failure? When wrong answers are penalized and corrections are perceived as punishments for making mistakes, students quickly learn the importance of getting the right answer at the first attempt. They learn that ideas are worthy of evaluation only when they have the perfect solution, or worse, when they are ready to put up a winning presentation. If we are serious about developing innovators who bravely persist in pushing frontiers, we must cultivate in students the right attitudes and mindsets to not see failures as final and to embrace every failure as a step towards success.
