Brilliant Mistakes

If you have ever flown in an airplane, used electricity from a nuclear power plant, or taken an antibiotic, you have benefited from a brilliant mistake. Each of these life-changing innovations was the result of many missteps and an occasional brilliant insight that turned a mistake into a surprising portal of discovery. There are countless books that tell you how to avoid mistakes. Now, in Brilliant Mistakes, Paul Schoemaker, founder and chairman of Decision Strategies International, shares critical insights on the surprising benefits of making well-chosen mistakes.

Brilliant Mistakes explores:

Brilliant Mistakes is based on solid academic research and insights from Paul's work with more than 100 organizations, as well as his provocative Harvard Business Review article (with Robert Gunther) "The Wisdom of Deliberate Mistakes." Paul provides a practical roadmap for using mistakes to accelerate learning for your organization and yourself.

Paul J. H. Schoemaker, PhD, author of Brilliant Mistakes: Finding Success on the Far Side of Failure, is founder and executive chairman of Decision Strategies International, Inc., a consulting and training firm specializing in adaptive strategic management, executive development, and technology-based tool development. He is also research director of the Mack Center for Technological Innovation at the Wharton School where he often teams up with executives to tackle frontier challenges in innovation and strategy. He has been a professor for many years at the University of Chicago and the Wharton School, and he worked in Royal Dutch/Shell's planning group in London to help refine their famed scenario-planning approach.

Paul has advised more than 100 organizations around the world and serves as board chairman of three companies (one based in Europe). He is coauthor (with J. Edward Russo) of Decision Traps and Winning Decisions, which jointly sold more than 100,000 copies. He is also author of Profiting from Uncertainty, Peripheral Vision (with George Day), and Chips, Clones and Living Beyond 100 (with Joyce Schoemaker). Paul has written over 100 academic and applied papers, in such journals as the Harvard Business Review, Journal of Mathematical Psychology, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Management Science, and The Journal of Economic Literature.