Changing the mindset about business failure.
06 June 2019
Partners of Early Warning Europe and stakeholders gathered in Brussels to talk about obstacles entrepreneurs can experience along their way and to share practices on breaking through the stigma associated with failure.
As a good practice the Failing Forward Campaign in Flanders (Belgium) was presented, which aims at breaking the taboos and stigmas around failure. The initiative builds its activities around organising conferences, local events, media campaigns and creating an online platform where entrepreneurs can share their own stories. The REBORN project (co-financed by Interreg Europe) gave more insight into best practices changing the negative perception of failed entrepreneurs.
Participants agreed that the taboo on failure still creates hurdles to honest entrepreneurs wishing to seek for early warning or restart. There is a need not only to tackle stigma associated with failure, but also to develop the abilities of entrepreneurs and the society to confront the possibility of distress or even failure. To encourage entrepreneurship, the emphasis should be on the positive potential of failure and how to take the lessons learned from it.