One Day, We Will Use Everything We Have Ever Learned

One Day, We Will Use Everything We Have Ever Learned

Every failed idea. Every abandoned project. Every weird experiment that didn’t go anywhere. It all adds up.

There’s a quote I’ve always loved: “One day, we will use everything we have ever learned.”

It sounds hopeful. But it’s also a deeply practical truth, especially for anyone working in innovation, product, or creative industries. Behind every "aha" moment is often a long list of dead ends, misfires, and things that almost worked. We just didn’t know how they fit yet.

This isn’t just motivational fluff. It’s the foundation of long-term creative and strategic growth. The myth of linear progress is persistent—one idea leading seamlessly to the next, with clear logic and milestones. But anyone who’s actually built something new knows the truth is messier. Ideas circle back. Solutions emerge out of unrelated scraps. Teams abandon things too early, or too late. And sometimes, the best thing you can do is leave a half-finished thought where you can find it later.

In a world driven by instant results, this philosophy asks us to play the long game. It’s about compounding value over time. And it starts by rethinking what we label as failure.

The Fallacy of Failure

In fast-paced, outcome-driven environments, we’re often taught to equate value with immediacy. If a project doesn’t ship, it’s a flop. If a pitch doesn’t land, it’s forgotten. This mindset is efficient for quarterly reporting, but it’s a terrible framework for long-term innovation.

The reality is: the things that don’t work right now might be the most valuable insights later. It’s a concept baked into venture capital, where ten investments might fail, but one return pays for the rest. Yet in day-to-day business, we rarely allow ourselves the same room to experiment, learn, and store.

And it’s not just about failing fast. It’s about remembering fast and storing intelligently. If your organisation has no institutional memory, it has no cumulative intelligence.

Lessons That Compound

Beyond the usual examples, we can see this principle playing out in less celebrated—but equally compelling—stories of innovation and reinvention.

• Slack: What started as an internal communication tool for a failed video game company (Tiny Speck) became one of the most important tools for workplace communication globally. The original goal was to launch a game called Glitch. The game didn’t make it—but the team noticed how powerful their internal chat tool had become. Instead of throwing everything out, they pivoted.

• Netflix: Before becoming the streaming giant, Netflix was a DVD rental service. The shift to streaming wasn’t just a leap of foresight—it was the result of internal experiments, technology investments, and a willingness to disrupt their own model. Years of operational know-how and data infrastructure became the backbone for a completely new business.

• Dyson: James Dyson famously created 5,127 failed prototypes before landing on his first successful bagless vacuum cleaner. The company’s innovation engine didn’t stop there—many of their best ideas came from returning to previously discarded concepts with better materials or better tech.

These stories show that the path to progress is almost never straight. And they reinforce a powerful idea: if you want to innovate, you must also know how to remember.

To make sense of this, we can look at the compounding value of ideas. Here are a few examples I keep returning to:

• Pixar: Originally a computer hardware company trying to sell graphic workstations. The hardware didn’t take off, but the storytelling tools built for animators evolved into a new kind of studio. From Silicon Valley misfit to Oscar-winning icon.

• NASA: Much of its research seems like it should stay in orbit. But the technologies developed to solve extreme space problems ended up transforming everyday life—memory foam mattresses, cordless vacuums, satellite TV, water filters. None of those were the original goal.

• Multi-touch screens: Originally prototyped for industrial applications, then used in cash machines, before becoming the defining feature of smartphones. Sometimes the infrastructure arrives decades before the application.

• Post-it Notes: Created from a failed attempt to make a strong adhesive. Instead, they stumbled onto a weak, reusable glue that turned into an office supply staple.

These stories aren’t just fun trivia. They’re proof of a deeper principle: innovation is often the reassembly of previous attempts. The seeds of your next success might be buried in your last “failure.”

Iteration as a Mindset, Not a Process

Iteration is often confused with repetition. But the best teams don’t just try the same thing over and over, they learn visibly. They build systems to track what they’ve tried, what they’ve learned, and what they might revisit later.

In my experience, the smartest teams treat each iteration not just as a route to a final product but as an asset in itself. It’s not about minimum viable products. It’s about maximum transferable learning.

This mindset requires a few cultural shifts:

• Document what didn’t work and why

• Celebrate the dead-end ideas during retros

• Create rituals for revisiting shelved concepts

• Encourage people to link back to older efforts in new proposals

Sometimes the problem isn’t the idea. It’s the timing. Or the stakeholder. Or the tech stack. Give it a few years. A new team. A better context. Suddenly, it clicks.

Building a Culture That Remembers

Companies often pride themselves on speed. But very few pride themselves on memory. And yet memory is what allows learning to compound.

Having worked in environments with toxic cultures, we were determined to create something better—where everyone had a voice, psychological safety was real, and progress was shared. That shift wasn’t just about values. It changed how we built products, how we reflected on our work, and how we treated failure.

From startup scrappiness to large-scale organisations, the principle was always the same: create the conditions for people to learn, speak up, and build together. We saw firsthand that the best ideas often came from those who felt safe enough to share a half-baked thought or challenge the direction. And we learned that collective memory doesn’t happen by accident—it takes intention.

So how do you avoid reinventing the wheel every 18 months? How do you build institutional intelligence without adding bureaucracy?

The answer is surprisingly simple: make memory part of the workflow. Archive prototypes, pitch decks, design mockups, customer research—even things that flopped. Keep the good with the bad. Not for nostalgia. For reuse.

Create rituals. Run regular sessions where teams bring back old ideas and reframe them with fresh context. Often, what didn’t work last year turns out to be exactly what’s needed now.

The organisations that succeed over time are the ones that know how to store and retrieve lessons. Memory isn’t a drag on speed. It’s a multiplier of progress.

What We Learned and Carried Forward

Not every product we launched was a success, but every one taught us something. Over time, we built a flexible system that prioritised memory and momentum:

• Improved the squad model over time, starting with Hive and refining it, guide by my founding team Jess Kyte, Michael O'Connell and John Gutch

• Kept product strategy and vision clear, simple, and visible on a single page, shaped by @ross sleight

• Brought the wider business on the journey to make internal startups succeed, rooted in Kassir Hussain Kayani vision

• Treated product design and storytelling as inseparable, inspired by Yves Béhar

• Made brand, culture, and product one, a principle learned from Pamela Brown

• Created an environment where every voice is heard, guided by Whatif especially Nina Powell & Dave Roycroft

• Learned from every success and (almost every) failure

Personally, I learned that I do my best work when I have a boss I truly trust and who inspires me—and that’s something I’ll carry with me into everything I build next.

Personal Lessons That Stick

One thing I’ve learned: I do my best work when I trust and admire the person I work for. When there’s safety to push boundaries. When iteration isn’t treated like indecision, but like discipline.

And I’ve seen what happens when companies pretend the past doesn’t matter. They repeat themselves. They burn people out. They flatten curiosity. That’s avoidable.

Your Next Breakthrough Might Already Be on the Table

So ask yourself:

• What’s something you once dismissed that might now be useful?

• What project felt like a failure but taught you something fundamental?

• What insight or skill do you have in your back pocket that doesn’t “fit” yet but might soon?

You might be sitting on your next breakthrough without even realising it.

Because in the end: one day, we will use everything we have ever learned.

And that might be the most important competitive advantage of all—not just what we know, but what we choose to keep. The companies, teams, and individuals who treat memory as an asset will be the ones who thrive over time. Not because they got it right the first time, but because they knew how to return to an idea and see it with new eyes.