Quote
“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.”
— Brené Brown, in Daring Greatly (2012) · Daring Greatly →
Why it was said
Brené Brown said this in her 2012 TED talk 'Listening to Shame', answering business audiences who had asked her to talk about innovation and creativity but to leave vulnerability out. Daring Greatly, published the same year, makes the case at length: work whose outcome cannot be known in advance is, by definition, exposed.
What it actually means
Every new thing (a product, a proposal, an honest sentence in a meeting) is made by someone who could not know how it would be received. Brown's research found that the people who made such things were not less afraid; they had decided that the uncertainty was the price of making anything at all. The sentence reframes exposure from a risk to be managed into the condition under which work that matters happens.
How to use it
- 1Notice where you are waiting to feel certain before you show something; that wait is the cost Brown describes.
- 2Share the unfinished version with one person this week and record what actually happened.