Tata Dare to Try Award: Rewarding Failure for 55x Innovation India
Tata rewards failures through Dare to Try — participation grew 55× by 2015. Psychological safety, not talent alone, is what makes teams truly innovative in India.
Here's the thing — most Indian offices are quiet, not because the team lacks ideas, but because they fear speaking up. Tata cracked this with the 'Dare to Try' award inside Tata InnoVista, publicly honouring bold failures. Participation surged 55 times between 2007 and 2015. McKinsey says Indian managers spend 21 hrs/wk in unproductive meetings — fear compounds that loss.
TL;DR- Tata's Dare to Try award (part of InnoVista) celebrates intelligent failures — participation surged 55× from 2007 to 2015
- Psychological Safety (Harvard prof Amy Edmondson) means team members feel safe to speak up, fail, and innovate without fear of punishment
- Fear of failure — not lack of talent — is the #1 reason great ideas die in Indian offices
- Leaders who create safe environments get more innovation than leaders who demand perfection
- Start recognising one intelligent failure at your next team meeting — it changes the dynamic immediately
What Is Tata's Dare to Try Award and Why Did India's Most Trusted Company Create It?
Tata InnoVista is one of India's most ambitious internal innovation competitions, run annually across the Tata Group. Inside it sits a category most companies would never dare create: Dare to Try. This category doesn't celebrate the project that succeeded. It celebrates the bold, well-researched, intelligently-executed attempt that failed to reach its target. Tata — one of India's most respected conglomerates — decided to publicly honour the courage to try, not just the outcome. That decision changed the entire culture of how innovation was discussed inside the Group.
How 55 Times Growth in InnoVista Participation Proves the Power of Rewarding Failure
Between 2007 and 2015, participation in the Dare to Try category surged approximately 55 times. That's not a typo — fifty-five times. What happened? Employees across the Tata Group started to see that their colleagues were being celebrated for intelligent failures — not fired, not sidelined, not quietly transferred to less visible roles. When the fear of public failure was removed, the floodgates opened. And many of those who initially failed in Dare to Try went on to innovate successfully in subsequent years. The category became a pipeline for the boldest ideas in the Group.
| Leader Behaviour | High Psychological Safety | Low Psychological Safety | Team Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| When a mistake happens | "What can we learn from this?" in team meeting | "Who is responsible for this?" public blame | Learning culture vs blame culture |
| When someone speaks up | Active listening, follow-up action taken | Dismissal, interruption, or subtle ridicule | More ideas vs fewer ideas shared |
| Team meeting dynamics | Debate, challenge, diverse voices heard | Silence, head-nodding, corridor complaints | Innovation vs stagnation |
| Response to failure | Post-mortem focused on systems, not people | Punishment, public example-making | Intelligent risk-taking vs risk avoidance |
| Innovation output | High — employees share early-stage ideas freely | Low — ideas stay locked in employees' heads | Competitive advantage vs talent waste |
| Retention of top talent | Strong — people feel valued beyond results | Weak — best performers exit first | Compounding capability vs constant churn |
Amy Edmondson's Psychological Safety Research and What It Means for Indian Leaders
Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson coined the term 'Psychological Safety' after studying hospital nursing teams in the 1990s. She found something counterintuitive: the best-performing wards reported more errors, not fewer. Why? Because nurses in those wards felt safe enough to speak up and report problems rather than hide them. Her later research with Google (Project Aristotle) found that the single strongest predictor of a high-performing team wasn't individual IQ, wasn't educational background, wasn't even experience — it was psychological safety: the shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.
Why the Boss Everyone Fears Always Gets Yes-Men Instead of Breakthrough Ideas
Trust me, I've trained leaders at Tata Tech, Mahindra, L&T, Bosch, Siemens, and Infosys — and I keep seeing the same pattern everywhere. The manager who raises their voice in review meetings, who publicly calls out failures in front of the group, who makes examples of poor performers — they get silence. The team doesn't bring problems early. The team doesn't flag risks. The team agrees in the meeting and complains in the corridor. That's not a team. That's a performance in front of a difficult audience. And it's costing Indian businesses more than they realise.
How to Build a Psychological Safety Culture in Your Indian Organisation — 3 Practical Steps
Here's what I tell every batch I train — whether it's at JSW, KPIT, or RBI. Step one: publicly recognise an intelligent failure at your next team meeting. Not sloppiness or carelessness — a genuine bold attempt that didn't land. Name it. Celebrate the thinking behind it. Step two: change the question from 'who is responsible for this?' to 'what can we learn from this?' in every post-mortem. Step three: role-model vulnerability. Share one mistake you made as a leader — and what it cost you, and what it taught you. That one act changes the room more than any motivational poster ever will.
What Most Indian Companies Get Wrong About Failure and Innovation
Most Indian organisations say they want innovation. But their systems tell a different story. Appraisals only reward successful outcomes. Post-mortem meetings feel like interrogations with a verdict already decided. Managers visibly avoid taking risks with their own reputations — so why would their team? The good news is that this can change fast. The 'fail fast, learn fast' mindset isn't a Silicon Valley luxury. Tata proved it works in an Indian conglomerate with over 100 companies and 935,000 employees. The model is already home — we just need leaders willing to use it.
How I Coach Psychological Safety With Bajaj Auto, Infosys, and L&T Teams
In a workshop I ran for a Bajaj Auto manufacturing team, I asked every person to share one mistake they'd made that year and what it taught them. The room was awkward for the first 10 minutes. Silence. Shifting eyes. Then the plant manager spoke first — shared a procurement decision that cost the team three weeks of rework. That broke it open. By the end of the session, the team had surfaced three systemic gaps nobody had dared raise before. One became the basis for a process change that cut rework time by 18%. That's what psychological safety does: it turns hidden problems into solved problems.
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Avinash Chate TEDx Speaker · Founder, The Future Corporate · 11+ yrs experience Avinash has trained Indian Army, BRO, RBI, BARC, JSW Steel and 1000+ corporate leaders across India. His work focuses on leadership development, communication skills, and behavioural training rooted in Indian values and modern business needs. |
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Tata's Dare to Try award and how does it work?
Tata's Dare to Try award is a category inside Tata InnoVista — the Tata Group's annual internal innovation competition. Unlike most awards that celebrate success, Dare to Try specifically honours bold, well-researched attempts that didn't achieve the desired result. The award recognises the courage and intelligence behind the attempt, not the outcome. Between 2007 and 2015, participation in this category grew approximately 55 times as employees across the Group realised that failure would be celebrated, not punished.
What is psychological safety and who first researched it?
Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson first coined 'Psychological Safety' after studying hospital nursing teams. She found that the best-performing wards reported more errors — not because they were worse, but because nurses felt safe to speak up. She later extended this research to the corporate world, and Google's Project Aristotle confirmed that psychological safety is the single strongest predictor of high-performing teams. It's not about being nice — it's about creating conditions where honest communication flows freely, so problems surface early instead of compounding silently.
How can an Indian manager build psychological safety in their team?
Three practical steps I've used with hundreds of Indian leaders: First, publicly recognise an intelligent failure at your next team meeting — something bold, well-intentioned, and that didn't land as expected. Second, change your post-mortem language from 'who did this?' to 'what can we learn?' Third, role-model vulnerability by sharing your own leadership mistake and what it taught you. These three behaviours, done consistently, shift team culture faster than any training programme because they change what's actually safe to say out loud.
Does rewarding failure actually improve business results?
Yes — and Tata InnoVista is the proof. A 55-times increase in participation from 2007 to 2015 directly expanded Tata's pool of innovative ideas. Many participants who initially failed went on to create successful innovations in subsequent rounds. Amy Edmondson's research with Google and multiple Fortune 500 companies shows a direct correlation between psychological safety scores and team performance metrics including problem-solving speed, customer satisfaction, and revenue growth. Rewarding intelligent failure isn't soft leadership — it's a precision business strategy with measurable returns.
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