Learning Through Failure

This project focuses on the drawing technique by Henri Matisse. I used his work as inspiration to create a retractable bamboo stick for personal use

Entrepreneurial Learning through Failure

In this paper, the literature of entrepreneurial learning is examined, with particular focus on critical events, namely failure of the business as defined by the cessation of company due to the company becoming insolvent. Business failure occurs when “a fall in revenues and/or a rise in expenses are of such a magnitude that the firm becomes insolvent and is unable to attract new debt or equity funding; consequently, it cannot continue to operate under the current ownership and management” (Shepherd, 2003, p. 318). I draw upon the theories and hypotheses that have been proposed by the leading authors in the field over the past 15 years, to build a new conceptual model of entrepreneurial learning through failure. The main contribution of the model presented is the identification of the key constructs of entrepreneurial self-efficacy, entrepreneurial preparedness, grief, and distance from failure as significant influencing factors of learning through failure

mfEGRA: Multifidelity Efficient Global Reliability Analysis through Active Learning for Failure Boundary Location

This paper develops mfEGRA, a multifidelity active learning method using data-driven adaptively refined surrogates for failure boundary location in reliability analysis. This work addresses the issue of prohibitive cost of reliability analysis using Monte Carlo sampling for expensive-to-evaluate high-fidelity models by using cheaper-to-evaluate approximations of the high-fidelity model. The method builds on the Efficient Global Reliability Analysis (EGRA) method, which is a surrogate-based method that uses adaptive sampling for refining Gaussian process surrogates for failure boundary location using a single-fidelity model. Our method introduces a two-stage adaptive sampling criterion that uses a multifidelity Gaussian process surrogate to leverage multiple information sources with different fidelities. The method combines expected feasibility criterion from EGRA with one-step lookahead information gain to refine the surrogate around the failure boundary. The computational savings from mfEGRA depends on the discrepancy between the different models, and the relative cost of evaluating the different models as compared to the high-fidelity model. We show that accurate estimation of reliability using mfEGRA leads to computational savings of $\sim$46% for an analytic multimodal test problem and 24% for a three-dimensional acoustic horn problem, when compared to single-fidelity EGRA. We also show the effect of using a priori drawn Monte Carlo samples in the implementation for the acoustic horn problem, where mfEGRA leads to computational savings of 45% for the three-dimensional case and 48% for a rarer event four-dimensional case as compared to single-fidelity EGRA

Transforming failure into success through organisational learning: An analysis of a manufacturing information system

This paper describes the idiosyncracies of a case study company, through highlighting issues and problems experienced during their attempts to evaluate, implement and realise the holistic implications of a manufacturing information system. Although the Information System (IS) was operational for a period of time, it was eventually deemed a failure. The reason for this was that a range of human and organisational factors prevented the organisation from embracing the full impact of the system. The eventual success of their information system was realised through a bespoke implementation, based upon a traditional systems development lifecycle that indirectly addressed learning issues following the earlier failed deployment. The paper highlights key issues relating to business success and failure, and then contrasts them alongside the presented case study. In doing so, the authors conclude by proposing methods through which manufacturing information systems can be transformed for business success. This is described achievable through both a realisation in the positioning of the organisation relative to technology management, and the related mapping of human and technological constructs that support information systems related succes

Conceptualising success and failure for social movements

The paper discusses some of the most significant conceptions of success and failure present in the social movement literature, and highlights the gaps present in these theories. Through a seven-pronged critique, the paper stresses that the prevalent conceptions of movement success or failure are inherently unable to grasp the overall consequences and essence of a social struggle. Moreover, it is argued here that the problem lies not just in these conceptions, but also the concept of success or failure, because in its application to an entity as dynamic and complex as a struggle, it is unable to transcend beyond its black-and-white confines. It trivialises the concept of failure, which is an opportunity for learning from experiences, a chance for error correction and a prospect to rise higher than ever before

Social learning and information sharing: an evolutionary simulation model of foraging in Norway rats

Social learning is distinguished from innate behaviour and individual learning as a behavioural strategy. We investigate simple mechanisms for social learning in an evolutionary simulation of food-preference copying in Norway rats. These animals learn preferences by interacting with conspecifics, but, unexpectedly, they fail to learn aversions after interacting with a poisoned demonstrator. They also follow each other for food sites. Simulation results show that failure to discriminate between sick and healthy demonstrators may be due to food toxicity in foraging environments. A seemingly complex instance of social information transmission is explained through the action of simple behaviours in an appropriately structured environment

Schooling as a Lottery: Racial Differences in School Advancement in Urban South Africa

This paper develops a stochastic model of grade repetition to analyze the large racial differences in progress through secondary school in South Africa. The model predicts that a larger stochastic component in the link between learning and measured performance will generate higher enrollment, higher failure rates, and a weaker link between ability and grade progression. Using recently collected longitudinal data we find that progress through secondary school is strongly associated with scores on a baseline literacy and numeracy test. In grades 8-11 the effect of these scores on grade progression is much stronger for white and coloured students than for African students, while there is no racial difference in the impact of the scores on passing the nationally standardized grade 12 matriculation exam. The results provide strong support for our model, suggesting that grade progression in African schools is poorly linked to actual ability and learning. The results point to the importance of considering the stochastic component of grade repetition in analyzing school systems with high failure rates.