No one likes to make mistakes. In insurance technology, mistakescost money; mistakes set you back; mistakes cost people jobs.

Yet, mistakes sometimes lead to greater success in the future ifpeople avoid the urge to panic and are willing to learn from theirfailures. Mistakes can be teaching moments that

otherwise might never be learned.

I'm not advocating mistakes as a development tool, particularlywith multi-million dollar projects on the line. I am advocating awillingness to formulate projects that may or may not prove to besuccessful, but can advance critical thinking that can make forbetter managers and better employees.

I recently read two articles that focus on achieving success andthe lessons from these stories is that mistakes don't always equateto failure, no matter what your parents or teachers might tellyou.

The first article was written by Malcolm Gladwell for The NewYorker and recalls the research done by Xerox at its PaloAlto, Calif., research center in the late 1970s and early 1980s asthe company developed, among other things, the laser printer.

Gladwell also explains how Apple and Steve Jobs took one ofXerox's crude tools and turned it into the mouse.

It was certainly a different era as companies were willing toinvest in research projects, knowing many of them likely would turnout to be useless. But when they came up with a winner, well,history was made.

A gentleman named Gary Starkweather was the genius behind thelaser printer and despite his success he often felt frustrated thatthe Xerox corporate leaders rejected his many ideas and, in thecase of the laser printer, actually ordered him to stop work onit.

Gladwell points out, though, that sometimes a responsible partyhas to "shut off the tap" of ideas, meaning people can continuebouncing ideas off the wall, but nothing will ever come of them ifthe ideas are allowed to flow without ever being developed intoworking products.

Gladwell writes: "The more Starkweather talked, the moreapparent it became that his entire career had been a version ofthis problem. Someone was always trying to turn his tap off. Butsomeone had to turn his tap off: the interests of theinnovator aren't perfectly aligned with the interests of thecorporation. Starkweather saw ideas on their own merits. Xerox wasa multinational corporation, with shareholders, a huge sales force,and a vast corporate customer base, and it needed to consider everynew idea within the context of what it already had."

The second article was written by Paul Tough for The NewYork Times Sunday Magazine. This article looks ateducation through the eyes of a New York City headmaster, DominicRandolph, and how IQ tests don't always predict success or failure. The article also considers character as away of predicting a student's future success.

One line, though, perfectly summarizes the critical thinkingskills that young people need to be taught at a time when manyschools would rather focus on helping students pass standardizedtests: "Randolph wants his students to succeed, of course—it's justthat he believes that in order to do so, they first need to learnhow to fail."

Innovation in any industry needs to be a never-endinginvestment, even in difficult times. Finding employees with theimagination and talent to develop new tools—and fostering anenvironment where such imagination is admired rather thanridiculed—should be an important part of every IT department.

We aren't foolish enough to believe that it is, though. Suchactions take courage—both at the development level and at thecorporate level—a character trait we all need to develop.