Making sense of failure to support experimental innovation: a case study of a financial services information system

Experiments have been somehow neglected in innovation literature. In this paper, we propose the analysis of a case of an IT project, which was constructed as an experiment and it was built as a reaction to the failure of developing a system based on the conventional modes. We use the theory of sensemaking and sensegiving in analysing historical documents to demonstrate that making sense of failure can lead to the success of an experiment. Thus, failure can be re-imagined as an experiment that can lead to success through a sensemaking process.
CERN IdeaSquare Journal of Experimental Innovation, Vol. 1 No. 2 (2017): Special Issue: "Experiments in an organizational context"