Finding a way through failure in health innovation
The second session in the 2026 Green Templeton Lecture Series Innovation and the Future of Health was perhaps the thorniest for its speakers, since – in a series subtitled Find, Fail, Fly – it turned to the topic of failure. Nevertheless, the panel, representing different perspectives on entrepreneurship in medicine and healthcare, agreed on the evening’s central premise: that if you’re not failing, you’re probably not innovating.
Benny Axt (Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Oxford Science Enterprises), Matthew Frohn (co-founder of Longwall Venture Partners) and Susanna Kislenko (director of the Founder Leadership Research Lab) discussed their own experience of failure and the lessons they’ve learned, the difference between tenacity and stubbornness, and how to know when to quit. As chair Christiaan de Koning pointed out, while it’s easier to talk about the things that have worked in both science and business than about those things that have failed, failure is an essential source of data for the future.
Spotting the warning signs
Venture capital in this field, Matthew explained, is not about picking sure-fire winners, but about accepting the role of luck while skewing the odds in your favour, especially by learning how to recognise problems which might be terminal, as early as possible. Technical problems and issues of market fit, he believes, are more likely to be fixable; failure is much more often a consequence of problems with people and team dynamics—and the panel all had their own experiences to back this up. In particular, Susanna’s research into ‘Founder’s Syndrome’ has helped her to identify some of the early warning signs: a founder who doesn’t share information or lacks a genuine long-term strategy, the presence of yes-people, an absence of disagreements or questions.
Who’s allowed to fail?
Benny and others offered examples of transparency about mistakes and weakness being used as a source of psychological safety: Bessemer Venture Partners’ ‘anti-portfolio’ of companies they failed to invest in; the Wharton professor Adam Grant’s CV of failures, for example. Yet, as questions from the audience raised, current innovation ecosystems do not give everyone an equal right to fail, or to be open about their own fallibility and uncertainty, without negative consequences. Women and minorities are more likely to lose authority and credibility, while straight white men (‘people who look like Steve Jobs’, as Susanna put it) are admired for their honesty and resilience.
There is, then, still plenty to talk about.
Green Templeton Lectures 2026
The third lecture in this series on health innovation will consider Fly: From breakthrough to system change on Wednesday 13 May.
