How to tell if a failure is intelligent

From an infographic about the book Right Kind of Wrong by Amy Edmondson.

An intelligent failure:

• One that leads to unexpected discovery, doesn't cause harm, and generates useful new learning
• Occurs when answers are not noble in advance.
• Is not an error.

Ways to tell?

• Takes place in a new territory. Curiosity in an uncertain territory with no ready-made answers.
• Opportunity driven. Intelligent failure is a part of meaningful opportunity toward a valued goal.
• Informed by prior knowledge. Hypothesis driven, based on sound homework and informed mental model to notice an anomaly.
• As small as possible. Design smart pilots to test new ideas before full scale launch.
• Bonus: you learned from it. Failures lessons learned and used to guide next steps.

Masters of intelligent failures are driven by curiosity, experiment, fearlessly, and make friends with failure.