The lights dim, and the audience holds its breath – we are about to award the fail of the year. For years, VTT Gala of Failures has celebrated those moments we’d rather forget but from which we all can learn.
“When the third seal fell into the bioreactor, I realised I was doing something wrong. How stupid can one be? It was so embarrassing.”
Research Engineer Terhi Viinikanoja accidentally dropped unintended seal components into a bioreactor while working in a lab. The error was big enough that, when asked 'for a friend', her more experienced colleagues speculated that the entire bioreactor might even break. Luckily, no real damage occurred.
In January 2025, Viinikanoja stood on stage before a hundred VTTers to share her failure, with CEO Antti Vasara watching from the front row.
“When the audience burst into laughter as my story unfolded, it felt amazing and empowering, almost therapeutic,” Viinikanoja recalls the nerve-wracking moment.
Viinikanoja won the Fail of the Year award at the seventh annual VTT Gala of Failures, where VTTers gather to celebrate their not-so-shining moments, and the lessons learned. The idea of openly sharing failures sounds risky at first, making one wonder – who was bold enough to suggest this in the first place?
Let’s ask the researcher behind the idea.
The Oscars of failures
The thought of celebrating failures originated in a VTT Young Professionals hackathon in 2017. The idea was set aside until Nicolaas van Strien, Research Scientist still part of the YP network, spontaneously pitched the unfinished proposal to 200 VTT leaders a year later. The reception was delightfully encouraging.
“The reaction from my VTT Young Professionals colleagues was priceless when I told them we needed to organise this event in just a few months,” van Strien recalls.
The Oscars were chosen as the inspiration for the gala.
“We’ll dress up, hand out awards and get a comedian to host. That’s how the idea of the VTT Gala of Failures took off.”
From the start, VTT’s leadership has supported the event; so much so that CEO & President Antti Vasara shared his biggest mistake at the very first gala in 2019.
“We were clearly onto something. When the bosses shared their own blunders, employees felt safe enough to do the same,” van Strien says.
The idea was that humour would attract people to the event, where you had to dare to put yourself out there.
“Many mistakes seem serious at the time, but we wanted to create a space where, after a few months or years, you can actually laugh about them,” he explains.
Can one spontaneous idea change work culture?
Mistakes and setbacks are inevitable when solving the world’s biggest challenges. According to van Strien, failure is a fundamental part of research and innovation.
“In research, most attempts don’t work – and that’s part of the process. A researcher may find a thousand ways something doesn’t work before discovering the one way that does,” he notes.
One could say that innovation is not possible if researchers are not allowed to fail. The goal of the VTT Gala of Failures has been to foster a work culture where failures are openly discussed and the lessons learned are shared.
Based on a recent survey conducted by the VTT Young Professionals network, VTTers feel that their work community is psychologically safe and that the threshold for sharing mistakes has lowered thanks to the gala. According to Van Strien, change has been slow, but year after year, feedback from gala attendees has been overwhelmingly positive.
For Viinikanoja, who spoke at the gala for the first time this year, the event felt particularly meaningful:
“When I was younger, I suffered from overwhelming shame over minor workplace mistakes. Fortunately, at VTT, people aren’t made to feel bad about failures,” Viinikanoja shares. “Instead, we learn from mistakes by improving guidelines and work environments. And in research, failures are naturally part of the process. During coffee breaks, we can share peer support and laugh together about our mistakes.”
Clearly, something is being done right.
“My dream is for the Gala of Failures to go beyond VTT”
The core idea of a failure-themed Oscars has remained the foundation of the VTT Gala of Failures. Over the years, mistakes shared at the event have ranged from shutting down a production line and embarrassing typos to a near miss with cyanide poisoning. Fittingly, even the event’s organisation hasn’t always gone smoothly.
“The first year, we made the rookie mistake of not ordering enough food. In 2021, we couldn’t get the winner trophies on time because the 3D printer broke down, so we had to use leftover trophies from previous years,” van Strien laughs.
Van Strien has been involved in organising the gala every year, and this year, he even took on a new challenge as the event’s host. Though today the “next generation” of the VTT Young Professionals network has taken over the main responsibility of the organising, van Strien still has a vision for the event’s future:
“The Gala of Failures has gained quite some media attention over the years, and many organisations have contacted us to hear more about it. That tells me we’ve created something valuable,” he says. “My dream is that the gala will not just stay at VTT, but spreads to other organisations.”
