Failure isn't the opposite of innovation - in many cases, it's an essential ingredient.
That was the message venture capitalist and USC Trustee Mark Stevens shared at last week's National Academy of Inventors annual conference, hosted this year by USC. There, researchers, inventors and university leaders gathered to discuss the future of discovery, entrepreneurship and technological change.
"Inventions change lives … They change entire economies," said Stevens, who spoke at the meeting's opening reception on June 1 at the Town and Gown ballroom on the University Park Campus. "At USC, I have had the opportunity to see firsthand what can happen when a university commits itself to building a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship. When students, faculty, inventors, researchers and industry partners come together around bold ideas, extraordinary things can happen."
Stevens, a longtime NVIDIA board member and one of Silicon Valley's most influential investors, received the NAI's inaugural Innovation Philanthropy Award during the June 1-4 conference. Last month, he and his wife, Mary, made a landmark $200 million gift to USC, an investment aimed at making the university the national leader in AI-powered research and creativity. In recognition of the gift, the USC School of Advanced Computing has been renamed the USC Mark and Mary Stevens School of Computing and Artificial Intelligence.
The inventors academy, founded in 2010, represents more than 4,600 members, whose collective contributions have generated tens of thousands of patents, launched companies and improved countless lives.
With three Class of 2025 Fellows and 13 Class of 2026 Senior Members inducted last week, USC now has 71 inductees. USC is one of more than 260 NAI member institutions worldwide.
USC President Beong-Soo Kim, who received an honorary membership to the academy at the opening reception, noted that "innovation is not a solitary achievement. It requires teams of individuals debating ideas, sharing insights and building upon one another's work."
Supporting invention at USC
Mark and Mary Stevens, who view philanthropy as a form of investment, have given generously to support invention at USC. In addition to their recent gift, they contributed $22 million in 2004 to establish the USC Stevens Center for Innovation, which advances university discoveries to the marketplace through technology transfer.
In 2015, the university named the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute in honor of their $50 million gift to support Provost Professor Arthur W. Toga's work to apply innovative imaging and information technologies to the study of the brain.
On the second day of the conference, Stevens spoke in depth about the role of failure in innovation during an on-stage conversation at the Loews Hollywood Hotel with USC Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation Ishwar K. Puri.
"You've described founders who failed once, failed twice and then succeeded," Puri said to Stevens. "What gives you confidence in someone who has failed?"
Stevens then told the story of how the first investment he championed as a young venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital collapsed, costing the firm $2 million.
"Failure can be one of the best teachers," Stevens said. "When evaluating founders who have failed before, we look at what they learned. Can they articulate the mistakes they made? Can they explain how they would do things differently?
"If you look at Silicon Valley, there are lots of inventors and founders who start companies and invariably they fail. But you live to fight another day.
"Embracing risk is critical … It's OK to run an experiment that doesn't produce the results you expected. That mentality is essential."
Innovation for impact
The conversation also turned to universities and their role in driving innovation.
While Stevens described research universities as essential engines of discovery, he acknowledged that higher education faces growing skepticism from the public amid rising tuition costs and uncertainty about career outcomes.
Universities, he said, need to do a better job communicating their value and demonstrating how research improves lives.
"I think universities need to rethink how they communicate what they're doing in research," Stevens said. "What areas of research are going to have the most impact on society and the public?"
The discussion inevitably turned to artificial intelligence, an area where Stevens watched the technology evolve from a niche field into one of the most transformative forces in modern computing.
"AI is the fastest-moving technology development I've ever seen," Stevens said. "I've had a front-row seat to the AI revolution. Even so, I'm amazed by the speed of adoption and the pace of change."
Yet he pushed back against fears that AI will replace human creativity, judgment or scientific discovery.
"AI is a tool," he said. "It's not going to replace human judgment."
