Failure was the ‘F’ word of the day at Guelph’s first International Women’s Day Conference -- failure as motive for innovation.
Canadian fashion designer Linda Lundström was the keynote speaker at the conference on Wednesday, and she said failure can be a great teacher and motivator.
“I lost almost everything,” she told some 200 women who attended the two-day conference. “The whole time I was building the business, I thought that was my life’s journey.
“But all my failures have fuelled my journey to what I actually was put here to do.”
Born in the remote town of Red Lake, Ontario, it was her ability to sew that prompted her to go to Sheridan College and that’s where the fashion world opened up to her.
She started Linda Lundström Ltd. in 1974 in a two-bedroom apartment and over 30 years grew to dominate the industry. But it was a bumpy ride to the peak and she experienced financial and personal failures along the way, she said.
“But sometimes failure is actually the spark of a great idea,” she said, adding that her infamous Laparka – her trademark coat that became a selling phenomenon – was designed as a seasonal stop-gap to solve a cash flow problem.
At her peak she had wealth and notoriety and won numerous awards for her business acumen and her charitable work. But the economy after 9/11 was rocky, her business declined and in 2008 the bank called her loan. She nearly lost everything, she said. But even that failure has spurred her to work with young designers and teach them what she knows.
“There’s nothing in the education system that equips people for failure,” she said.
Lundström is also starting what she calls the Sewing Circle Project, an initiative to bring sewing machines and other items to remote First Nations communities.
Lundström’s talk was one of many events at the conference that was organized by Innovation Guelph and a group of community partners. The theme was ‘Women leading in the new economy’ and workshops and breakout sessions looked at changes in leadership, challenges and new ways of working.
The ‘new economy’ is an economy based on knowledge, creativity and social capital – skills women have in spades.
A panel of women leaders talked about the hard lessons they learned and how they learned them.
“There’s no such thing as work-life balance,” said Cathy Taylor, executive director of the Ontario Nonprofit Network. “It’s more like work-life integrating. You have to learn to be present in the moment.”
The conference began on Tuesday evening with a keynote presentation by Ginger Grant, an innovation strategist and organizational designer, professor in Innovation at Sheridan College, and author.
Grant talked about the power of stories to help a business explain its culture and vision to its customers and employees. She said collecting data is fine, but even data can tell a story if it’s analyzed correctly.
“Stories carry emotions,” Grant said. “Innovation is a change in meaning. It’s a change in the story and you have to let people get behind it emotionally.”
