Learning by doing mistakes improving ICT systems through the evaluation of application mistakes

Abstract

Last July, the University of Exeter, Great Britain, has empirically demonstrated how the human brain learns more from mistakes and unsuccessful events than from successful experiences. Memory, in fact, is more stimulated by mistakes and, after that, tends to generate a self-protection mechanism that, in a reaction period of 0, 10 s, warns of the existing danger. Starting from the article of Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, we have tried to understand if the economic organizations, and in particular the ones that face IT implementation programs, act as humans. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how it is possible to invert a negative tendency or an unsuccessful IS implementation through the deeply analysis of mistakes and of their impact on value creation. In our proposal, the analyzed case study shows how a correct management of mistakes can generate value, through a virtuous cycle of learning by doing. © 2008 Physica-Verlag Heidelberg.