The Brilliant Failure Project

International partnerships often involve a lot people, resources, money, different languages and culture. In fact, in such settings, there are heaps of things that may go wrong.

Our team of researchers agreed that while you cannot avoid failure, we at least want to learn from it. But how? We asked people in Rwanda, Switzerland,  Sri Lanka, Bolivia and beyond the same question: What is the role of failure in international partnerships? And how can it become brilliant.

The term “brilliant failure”, by the way, was inspired by dutch researcher Paul Ikse, he calls is ““…as a well-prepared opportunity with a different outcome than planned and a learning effect”. To get this straight: It is not about anything goes but about a certain twist, we might want to call it a skill set. A way of assuming leadership, dealing with cultural difference and emotion.

Research Documentary with animation

Produced in collaboration with the University of Lausanne and Brickwall (UK), funded by the Swiss National Science Fund (SNSF) and Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC)