We all know the supposed benefits of learning from our mistakes.  However, movie producer Nora Ephron – producer of chick flicks such as Sleapless in Seattle and When Harry met Sally – questions whether we can learn any lessons from the duds.  In an article by Gerald Wright in the SMH, Ephron’s argument is: if, after a movie she realises that an actor was miscast, she can’t say she’ll never miscast again, because at the time she thought she was casting well.  Similarly, as a a writer she cannot learn not to write bad scripts in the future, because at the time she didn’t think she’d written a bad script.

Ephron’s quotes raises some important issues about evaluating the business outputs of the creative process and raises implications for managing performance when creative outputs are not delivering the desired outcomes.

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