What can be learned from ideas that fail?

Family Literacy Empowerment Program (FLEP) Focused on supporting children and parents to develop pre-emergent literacy skills, this program conducted workshops (prior to Covid-19) addressing pre-emergent literacy skills. FLEP also sought to reduce stigma and notions that “low socioeconomic minority parents…don’t care about literacy skills.”

Training Grounds Inc. This non-profit organization helps families and professionals to understand the development of children aged 0-5yrs. The program provides a free We PLAY Center and parent workshops as well as fee-based professional workshops. The program often works with foster care parents, as well as parents and professionals, all of whom can benefit from understanding typical developmental milestones, and how children, including those that are on the autism spectrum, might be different.

Cognitive ToyBox This venture is a unique school-based assessment platform for teachers; it includes technology, observation- and game-based elements, seeking to make childhood assessment more efficient and effective.

WHAT CAN BE LEARNED FROM IDEAS THAT FAIL?

From the Alumni Survey (2022) it is known that 87.7% of ventures are continuing in some way. Specifically, 70.4% of respondents’ ventures are still active and for 17.3% of respondents, while their original venture is not active, they continue working on ideas developed through 4.0. This pivoting is of interest to the research team, and the lessons that can be learned from this (and, therefore, ideas that fail) is captured below in content sourced from the Alumni Interviews (2021) described below.

Due to a variety of factors, many alumni have been faced with the decision to pause, transition, continue, or end their venture. These crossroads moments are a crucial, and many times difficult, period for 4.0 fellows. Several interviewees shared that they would benefit from assistance navigating these decisions. Here an alumnus describes how the venture idea has slowed yet stayed with them and what questions they are exploring about how to continue being impactful with their efforts.

“Now I'm a full-time student, so I'm not doing any of the work explicitly… I have a website, I put posts up every week. But in terms of a full-fledged venture, it's never become a full baked venture that really clearly defined a problem statement, really clearly defined a solution, that has been tested, piloted, scaled.

It hasn't gone through the full evolution of that. I'm almost… kind of still at the starting blocks, around really trying to figure out and refine what it can be… [I’m] figuring out, does it need to be, or are my experiences, my passion, my skill set, better served and more impactful if I just work with an existing organization that is also deeply invested in doing work around young black men?... There's lots of organizations doing collective impact work, doing community-based work. It could be its own thing, I could also be very happy just working with an existing organization that's invested in a similar group as I am.”

An alumnus suggested that 4.0 could create openings or opportunities following major personal or professional transitions in order to counsel alumni through pausing an idea, or pivoting, rather than stopping the venture. There is a lack of closure for alumni whose ventures have not continued because no one coached them away from the venture, no one did a “closeout interview.” “At the end of the fellowship, we had our graduation. And a lot of it was focused on what are the next steps for your venture, how do you continue leveling up, and how do you expand. It was a lot of skill building for what's coming next... I wish that there had been an option for me, when I went back for my graduation, to really process and decide, just have somebody to be a sounding board about the idea of closing down an idea. What I liked about 4.0 is I felt like that was

always on the table. It was never like everybody is going to succeed and everyone's idea is going to become a million-dollar business. It was always like failure is common, failure is to be expected. It is okay. That was really great. But I felt like I could have used someone… It would have been really great if there was a way to decide, and not just me in my head feeling the lack of confidence, me just deciding on my own. And again… I had all these life things going on, so it's possible that nothing could have changed my mind, but it would have been nice to have been walked through it in a more Focus area way. How do you decide if it's the right time to close it down, or how do you adapt your idea to a new location?... For me I was just like there was enough things going on in my life that I was like I'm not going to pick it back up again. But I think that it's possible that I could have pivoted, I could have truly paused [instead of stopped]… I think that's what would have been helpful, is maybe some workshop or someone to walk me through in a more objective way, are you sure you're ready to give up on it entirely, or do you want to pivot it to just being for elementary [schools], do you want to pivot it, what would it look like to close down something in one community and restart it in another community? How would you even know that is necessary in the new community?”

Suggestions from alumni interviews echo this idea that the roles of 4.0 coaches could be expanded to: include advising fellows through a pivoting process, make decisionmaking more intentional, and provide closure if they ultimately decide to end or pause their ventures:

“The other thing is you could think about maybe a coach or somebody who has ended their venture, who could help maybe talk a person through that who was... in that crossroads.”

Another interviewee described how coaching could be a “thought partnership” to help bring clarity to venture goals and their future course:

“I think for me personally, I probably needed, and still need, which is why I'm still grappling, or would benefit from, I need probably just almost, I guess 49