Alex Miller has written a very important post on the importance of failure, putting, what has been one of my guiding principles in leadership and working environment building, in words.
It can't be emphasized enough that for a company to be a leader and not a follower one of the most important things is to foster an environment that encourages and rewards failure - as a potential outcome of taking risks, trying crazy ideas out and out-of-the-box-thinking. It is only in a working environment where the fear of failing has been eliminated that the employees are set free to create amazing things.
This was one of the things that I loved most while working for Terracotta, an amazing place to be working at, and one of the reason why it has managed to hire and keep so many brilliant developers and visionaries.