Quote:
Originally Posted by beyeas
Frankly we seem to have fallen into the trap where Nova Scotia is a society that won't take bold risks because it is afraid of failure. It is a huge source of frustration for me that failing in a bold initiative is treated in this province simply as "failure" rather than an opportunity to "learn and try again". Those jurisdictions that we always hear politicians etc saying that we aspire to be, fundamentally understand the need to celebrate those serial innovators who understand the role of failure in the process of change and innovation. Instead, and this forum is occasionally rife with it, anyone in NS who fails is derided with smarmy remarks and put downs that act only to dampen enthusiasm for strategic risk. Rather than putting people down and making derogatory comments about them, we should be celebrating people/governments/businesses who are willing to take calculated risks, perhaps fail, learn from mistakes, and try again. By not doing so we are stuck in an endless economic rut where we keep trying the same low-risk strategies again and again. It is no wonder that many of the Nova Scotians who have gone on to major success as innovators did so after leaving here and going to places that actually get it. To me, this is all part and parcel with the lack of desire to attempt bold initiatives in transportation infrastructure... what if it doesn't work out exactly as planned??!
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I think this is a good point, but do any politicians/governments anywhere in Canada actually take bold risks?
It occurs to me that risk taking, or at least the idea of learning from failures, is quite common in some aspects of private industry, especially in research/development and IT, but you don't seem to see it much in anything related to government. This is likely because most things seem to happen in 4-year (election period) chunks. It seems that most politicians are afraid of failure as it could prevent them from being re-elected the next time around once the opposition frames it as the current government wasting taxpayers money on something that failed.
That said, I did hear that the feds are trying to insert some of that thinking into their IT fields to bring it more in line with private industry, to avoid situations where the systems are out of date by the time development is finished or are grossly inadequate from the start (think Phoenix payroll system)...