Innovation Europe > News > Innovation EU Vol2-1 > Learning from the nearlings

Error prevention is a key focus for many innovation projects in Europe and around the world. Yet, if the focus is on error prevention, there tends to be too much control and not really a mindset to letting go.

For true innovation, the ability to let go is just as important as thinking of the new.

Mentally, we are accustomed to focusing on error prevention , and on preventing failures, while actually we should also be able to let go of the major focus on error prevention , mistakes and failures and focus on learning from mistakes.

So let me introduce the concept of the “nearling”. A nearling is a positive word for something new that was done with the right intentions, which has not – yet – led to the right result.

The reasons for nearlings not to succeed can be diverse: the circumstances have changed; a better option has been chosen; an error was made; fate decided differently; there suddenly were other priorities,and so on.

For a long time, there has been no right English word for this phenomenon. There are the words “failure” or “mistake”, and error prevention but they have a negative connotation.

Nearling, on the other hand, comes from “nearly” – an initiative with the right intention. The nearling sits between zero and one, between failure and success.

You only recognise a nearling when you look back. You can always learn from a nearling. The nearling fills a gap in the international innovation language.

You can be proud of nearlings because:

• You started an initiative
• You may have moved others
• Maybe it led you to something that was successful
• You need many nearlings, for a few successes
• You learned from it.

The nearling emphasises that initiatives are almost always valuable, even if they don’t lead to the right result. They may be the result of an experiment, where something may have gone wrong or been unexpected, but something has been learned from it.

The nearling is open source, instead of error prevention please use nearling... and if not, it’s a beautiful nearling!

For more information, contact:

Ramon Vullings, Chairman
European Association for
Creativity and Innovation (EACI)

Marie Henriettalei 19,
2660 Hoboken, Belgium
Website: www.eaci.net