Is “zero” a result? Is “no” an answer?
After being challenged for obtaining no results from experiments on a battery, that great American inventor Thomas Edison retorted “Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results! I know several thousand things that won’t work.”
Sometimes you have a great idea, but once you test it in the real world, it turns out to be chimeral or outright wrong. In that case, what should you do? This is a common dilemma for scientists, as the entire scientific method is based on hypothesis, testing, and proving/disproving the hypothesis. The best results are clear, and outright failures are about as clear as you can get (albeit unsatisfying). It’s critical to publicize even negative findings, even if it feels like a big nothing. If scientific journals were only filled with positive hypotheses (those supported by the experimental evidence), it would create the false illusion that scientists were only ever proving themselves right.
As crucial as this process is for inventors and scientists, it can be easy for the rest of us to forget the importance of recognizing when a hypothesis just doesn’t pan out. This post aims to do so publicly. In fact, we believe it is essential that any organization focused on innovation and change present its work as more than just straight-line successes but share the meanders, outright failures, and dead ends along the way.
EPIC and our partners at Sand County Foundation work closely with many municipal wastewater plant operators as we develop municipal-agricultural watershed partnerships for water quality. We’re always looking to see what factors contribute to plants with exceptional records of producing clean water. Recently, a plant operator remarked that reporting directly to the mayor, instead of to a public works director, allowed him to make a compelling case for upgrading the plant, rather than just being another line item competing for funding against a new fire engine or playground or any of the countless other expenses necessary in a small town. A second waste water treatment plant operator shared that he was lucky he operated outside the city's administrative structure which gave him the flexibility to be innovative and try new things in his quest to process wastewater. We thought we saw a trend.
So, we decided to investigate if there was a correlation between the reporting structure for wastewater plant operators and their performance in reducing nitrogen and phosphorus in effluent.
Our hypothesis was that a structure allowing more control over the budget and political discussions would allow a Director to be more innovative and creative in developing cheaper/better solutions to nutrient reduction.
We tested this hypothesis by surveying a few of the best performers in Iowa (those with the highest average reduction of nitrogen concentration). To our surprise, the response from these plant operators was a clear “no”. They felt strongly that the best predictor of overall success in operation had nothing to do with structure but everything to do with individual personalities and the resources provided to them.
This ran counter to what we expected, and that’s OK. We received a clear result to our hypothesis. Trying on the idea, quickly testing it then jettisoning it when it proved to be a false lead is how innovation happens. More specifically, listening to the people we’re working to help allows us to create much better solutions than trying to make material circumstances fit our imagined narratives. This experience helped strengthen our connections with the plant operators, and most importantly ruled out one imagined fix, allowing us to get closer to what will actually enable our end goal: clean, safe water for all.