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The Most Important Thing is to Know Oneself : 2022 Fall Failure Seminar Overview
Author
Hyejeong Ahn ┃ Research Assistant Professor at KAIST CAF
발행일
2022-12-15 17:23:21
The second CAF Failure Seminar was held on November 3rd. The 'Failure Seminar' is a talk series hosted by CAF where leaders from various fields are invited to share their failure experiences and unique perspectives on failure, encouraging the audience to take on new challenges. Unlike the first seminar, which was held as an online event in spring, the second Failure Seminar was an in-person event held at the KAIST Yang Seungtaik Auditorium, bringing the speakers and audience even closer together.
The morning session, which was centered around the theme of ‘Failure Studies for Entrepreneurs,’ featured talks by Lee Yongkwan from Bluepoint Partners and Lee Jinyeol from the Korea Senior Lab. Lee Yongkwan, who has experience investing in over 260 companies, emphasized the need for entrepreneurs to develop their metacognition skills, which allows them to maintain objective situation awareness. Lee supported his points by describing his own experiences. Lee Jinyeol gave a vivid recount of the lessons he had learned from his initial failure as an entrepreneur, which he credits as the reason why he is able to successfully lead his current venture in the Korea Senior Lab. His message to entrepreneurs is to strive to become not the ‘No. 1,’ but rather the ‘Only 1.’
In the afternoon session that followed, Professor Kim So Young from the KAIST Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy and Yun Yuh Soon (the first woman to be given a leadership role in LG and the current CEO of LG Art Center) shared unique and diverse perspectives on the fear of failure. Professor Kim started her speech with “failure is indeed something we should be afraid of.” She presented the audience with various cases from sports, startups, and research in addition to her own firsthand experiences to discuss a different view on failure. Yun described various episodes from her life, such as the disastrous time she had studying abroad or the countless setbacks and successes she went through to become the first woman in an executive position in LG. She also gave her thoughts on how people should approach their careers and life as a whole with the world undergoing drastic changes.
The four invited speakers come from diverse backgrounds and have all walked different paths in different fields. Nevertheless, they all emphasized the same message when it comes to failure: the importance of knowing oneself. Being fully aware of one’s situation (Lee Yongkwan), saying no to standards set by others and thinking about what is truly important to oneself, (Lee Jinyeol), understanding one’s potential and limits based on personal experiences and decisions (Kim So Young), and focusing on one’s strengths and accomplishments (Yun Yuh Soon) – these are important traits that will allow an individual to avoid major setbacks and find valuable meaning in failure experiences.
It is also important to remember that life is an ongoing process and that we should not label each and every event that we experience as either a success or failure. The speakers also reiterated the importance of focusing on the lessons to be learned from our setbacks in life instead of dwelling on each failure.
When the audience was asked how about they felt about the online/offline event, one member of the audience said, ‘after listening to the speakers talk about their life experiences, I now have a wider perspective when it comes to success and failure.’ Another audience member said, ‘it was heartwarming and encouraging to hear the speakers give honest recounts of their failures.’ Many also felt recharged by the highly contagious positivity emitted by the speakers.