The Center for Ambitious Failure was established in June 2021, in line with President Kwang Hyung Lee’s initiative to establish a “failure laboratory” and to instill a culture of resilience and creativity in KAIST. The KAIST Herald interviewed Professor Junyong Noh, the director of the Center, to find out more about its goals and future activities.

Please introduce yourself. 

I am a professor in the Graduate School of Culture Technology (GSCT). I do research in the field of computer graphics and vision with a focus on facial and character animation, virtual/augmented reality, [and] content creation for immersive experiences. Prior to joining KAIST, I was a graphics scientist at a Hollywood visual effects company, R&H Studios, performing R&D for the creation of blockbuster movies. Recently, I was appointed as the Director of the Center for Ambitious Failure.

What is the Center for Ambitious Failure? When was it established? 

The Center was established in June 2021 as part of the QAIST vision suggested by President Lee. KAIST has [always] been success-oriented; we believe that always producing successful outcomes is the way to get [to be at the top]. [Our view of] failure is [usually] something that we should be ashamed of or something we should avoid as much as possible. 

However, if we are afraid of failure, we cannot make daring challenges. If we keep focusing on achieving success, our ideas, our methodology, or our actions will not be innovative enough. We can also learn from failures. There are many lessons that you can learn from your own or someone else’s failures. 

Therefore, the goal of the Center is to foster the spirit for KAIST members to challenge without fear of failure. For this, we will collect and analyze relevant data, and actively share the results with the people inside and outside of the KAIST community. This will eventually take us to greater success.  

What are the short-term and long-term goals of the Center?

In the short term, we hope to transform the culture of KAIST campus. Failure is [actually] very common in our lives. There are numerous cases where leaders in our society underwent failures: examples include Einstein, J.K. Rowling, Elon Musk, as well as so many current seemingly successful big names. In addition, there are many failed trials that eventually turned into great successes. Examples include the discovery of the Americas by Columbus. He never reached India. More recently, we saw the Tegra project by NVIDIA, which was a disastrous failure as a mobile process but turned into a great hit as a powerful processor for autonomous vehicles. We will share many such cases in the form of invited seminars or small group workshops to create an atmosphere in which experiences of failure can be freely shared amongst members.

In the long term, we hope to send meaningful messages to Korean society. Korean society is as rigid as KAIST — if not more so — when they look at success or failure. For example, they treat the failure of a government research project almost as a crime. Your life will very likely be ruined by one failed startup attempt. [However,] society should be more flexible. There should be a safety net for any failed attempts so that people can come back up from unsuccessful experiences as long as they learn lessons from the failed attempts. We hope that the research outcomes and activities by the Center can transform the way the [citizens] and government view [failures throughout society]. 

What is your main job or role? 

As Director, I oversee the operation of the Center. We recently hired a research professor, Dr. Hyejeong Ahn, who holds a Ph.D. degree in socio-cultural psychology. Her Ph.D. thesis was on system justification, in which she studied why people do not want to challenge or change the status quo. She and I work together to perform research, collect and analyze data, and discuss how we can effectively share the findings with the KAIST community.   

What kind of studies is the center currently pursuing? 

We are in the process of compiling a list of current leaders who underwent failures in the course of their lives and can share their valuable experiences with us. We are also building a similar list of experts who have pioneering perspectives on failures and are willing to advocate new views on failure for greater successes. We are actively collecting cases [of failures] that can provide valuable lessons, and are planning various workshops and seminar series to disseminate our findings effectively.  

Why do you think learning about failure or failed studies is important, especially for KAIST?

According to a study conducted in Columbia University, recognizing that visionaries such as Albert Einstein or Marie Curie also experienced failure can actually help students perform better in school. Students who only learned about the scientists’ achievements saw their grades decline. Many times, we only see the huge achievements of intellectual giants and easily get intimidated thinking that such achievements are possible only by some chosen geniuses because we have never heard of the hardships they went through. As a result, we give up on setting the highest goal. However, world-changing innovations can only be achieved through daring challenges, and it is important to realize that we are not alone when we struggle towards success.

Right now, not many people have heard of the Center for Ambitious Failure. Do you have any future plans for introducing it and/or encouraging participation from students?

Yes, starting from January 2022, we will send out monthly newsletters [featuring] various interviews, case studies of failure, issues and trends, and columns by opinion leaders. We also plan to hold a “Failure Week” each semester in which a “Leaders Fail” seminar series and small group workshops will take place. Students are encouraged to join the seminar to listen to inspiring stories of the leaders and to participate in the workshop to freely share their own experiences in an ad-hoc small group.    

Anything else you would like to say to our readers?

I am extremely excited to have this center up and running. Korea has witnessed remarkable growth by pursuing success in the past. Now we are fundamentally changing our strategy, which has never been attempted in academia before anywhere in the world. We will promote opportunities for daring challenges. I would really appreciate continued interest and active participation in the various activities planned by the Center.