Adventurous Thinking & Learning To Lean In All The Way
“The ability to lean in all the way is why I’ve been able to do so many cool things.” – Sally Dominguez
Sally Dominguez is an Innovation Catalyst. As a multi-award-winning Inventor, Adventurer, Journalist, and Educator, Sally has unique experience practicing, observing, teaching and advocating for innovation. Sally has updated Design Thinking with her ADVENTUROUS THINKING methodology, designed to promote the agile mindset needed for consistently innovative practices. No longer is design thinking reactive. Using the Five Lens tools to alternately converge and proliferate thinking, ADVENTUROUS THINKING enables users to think outside their default “expert” neural pathways, and re-ignite the curious mindset that is the key to consistent innovation. ADVENTUROUS THINKING has been used internationally by the Shenzhen government, Genentech, Sandisk, Clif Bar and other corporates, runs every semester as a workshop at Stanford and was presented as part of the SXSW Frugal Innovation panel. Sally has taught ADVENTUROUS THINKING as a means to integrate innovation into the Australian school curriculum for the Association of Independent Schools and the Catholic Schools Office.
Sally’s experience is steeped in innovative practice and innovative commentary. She judged invention on ABC TV’s New Inventors for six years, she is an ambassador for Engineers Without Borders Australia, and in 2012 she was named one of Advance Australia’s “50 for the Future” entrepreneurs in the USA. Sally has won seven international awards for her innovative products and her work is held in the Powerhouse Museum.
- A product innovator with six international awards for design & sustainability
- Ambassador for Engineers Without Borders Australia
- Named of one Australia’s 50 for the Future US-based entrepreneurs
- US correspondent for Fairfax Media and Virgin’s Voyeur magazine.
- Judging cars for Wheels magazine, Fairfax media, and design for Spark Awards and the Australian Design Awards
- First Australian (with co-driver Samantha Stevens) to race the grueling Rallye De Gazelles 8-day race across Morocco.
- Nest highchair held in the Powerhouse Museum Permanent Collection
Below Are Some Highlights From This Episode:
2:40 Whats The Closest You’ve Ever Gotten To Quitting?
5:20 Career Trajectory
9:30 What Failure Contributed To Your Success Most?
10:15 Raised By Pretty Unusual Parents / Not Caring What People Think
11:30 The Ability To Lean In All The Way
12:45 Adventurous Thinking / Swirly Thinking
15:45 Provoking Curiosity
19:20 Bias For Action
21:00 Thinking Yourself Into A Circle
22:15 Five Calls A Day To Reconnect
25:20 Resume Of Failures
27:00 Running A Firm
31:25 Bug Design
33:15 Rain Water
36:00 Keep An Eye On The Big Picture
38:30 Not Knowing Your Market & Tea Tree Solutions
43:00 What‘s Your Most Recent Failure
44:00 Parting Thoughts About Failure
This episode is brought to you by Audible, audio entertainment that includes the largest library of audio books. Get Your Free 30 Day Trial Now!
Bonus Content
As you may already know, every guest on our show completes and submits a “Resume of Failures”. You can find Sally’s here.
“My reputation grows with every failure.” ~George Bernard Shaw
“The only real failure in life is one not learned from.” ~Anthony J. D’Angelo
“Failure doesn’t mean you are a failure… it just means you haven’t succeeded yet.” ~Robert Schuller
“The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.” ~Napoleon Hill
“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” ~Albert Einstein
“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” ~Henry Ford
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” ~Thomas A. Edison
“Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.” ~John Dewey
~“The better a man is, the more mistakes he will make, for the more new things he will try.” ~Peter Drucker
“I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.” ~Michael Jordan
“My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.” ~Abraham Lincoln
“The only time you mustn’t fail is the last time you try.” ~Charles F. Kettering
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” ~Thomas Edison
“Life’s real failure is when you do not realize how close you were to success when you gave up.” ~Anonymous
“You always pass failure on your way to success.” ~Mickey Rooney
“There are two kinds of people in this world: those who want to get things done, and those who don’t want to make mistakes.” ~John Maxwell
“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” ~Winston Churchill
“You can’t have any successes unless you can accept failure.” ~George Cukor
“In order to succeed you must fail, so that you know what not to do the next time.” ~Anthony D’Angelo
“I failed my way to success.” ~Thomas Edison
“I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is a step forward.” ~Thomas A. Edison
“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” ~Elbert Hubbard