What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?

I heard a very thought provoking talk by Regina Dugan, Director of DARPA, last week. Her job is to lead and inspire the engineers and scientists of DARPA to come up with mind-blowing innovations. I loved how she challenges them by asking: What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail? We all know that fear of failure shouldn't prevent us from doing what we want. Yet most of us factor in the chances of success when we make our decisions. Inevitably that prevents us from trying some things that we consider too risky - yet those "risky" things could become amazing achievements - only if we try. The truth is that we are not aiming high enough if we are not failing some of the times.

I asked the boys what they would do. Nico would build an in-the-brain-videogame (whatever that means), or, wait, no, a Siri that understands alien languages and actually does anything you ask (I guess it would have to be renamed genie). Paco would build a spaceship that could travel at the speed of light to explore the universe. Cool, ah? Ale was in swim practice this morning so I'll have to ask him later...

Me? I am already cooking a new project. It is ambitious and it might fail. Which I guess is the whole point.