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Resilience as a Driver of Innovation: The Fuckup Nights Bootcamp for Visa

Visa implemented a bootcamp with Fuckup Nights to turn crises into opportunities, promoting resilience and a culture of innovation.

By:
Pepe Villatoro
February 19, 2025
Resilience as a Driver of Innovation

In the financial services industry, change is constant. To strengthen adaptability in the face of challenges and promote an innovation culture founded on learning from failure, we designed and implemented a bootcamp for Visa’s team.

This tailor-made activity designed to help the team transform crises and challenges into growth opportunities.

Through this initiative, Visa encourages empowerment and ownership within the organization.

A Challenge for Visa's Team

Visa was searching for a program that would motivate its team to perceive challenges as catalysts for creative solutions. The goal was to encourage an ownership mindset, promoting an active role in problem-solving and the development of innovative proposals.

The team had one key objective in mind: to increase empowerment and ownership during crises.

Often, fear of failure limits experimentation and the ability to iterate. Visa needed a space where employees felt safe to explore new ideas without the fear of being judged for their mistakes.

Designing a Safe and Growth-Oriented Space

With this challenge in mind, the Fuckup Nights team worked together to thoughtfully designed a customized space: "Resilience Strengthens in Moments of Crisis.". This workshop provided concrete tools to reshape the perception of failure and learn how to manage mistakes effectively.

The session focused on three fundamental pillars:

  1. Fear of error as the main barrier to experimentation. Recognizing that the fear of failure stifles innovation and restricts a team’s ability to reach its full potential.
  2. Psychological safety as the pilar for creativity. People are more willing to propose innovative ideas when they are in an environment where educated attempts are encouraged rather than stigmatized.
  3. Managing mistakes to accelerate learning. Turning failures into opportunities to learn and overcome obstacles while reducing learning costs and optimizing internal processes.

The workshop was facilitated by Eric Jimenez from Fuckup Nights HQ, with strategic contributions from Visa's team. Their industry expertise helped connect the learnings to the team’s real-world challenges.

The Most Transformational Moment

The workshop’s peak moment came when participants opened up to share their experiences and acknowledged that crises are part of the path to growth.‍

An attendee commented:


"I really appreciate having a space to honestly talk about challenges and crises. We realized that while we can't avoid them, we can certainly learn from them and use them as a springboard for new ideas."

This experience demonstrated that resilience is not just a theoretical concept but a critical skill for building high-performing teams.‍

When teams learn to see failures as opportunities, innovation becomes a natural outcome.

These types of spaces create a lasting and meaningful impact on employees’ mindsets and provide tangible, actionable value to organizations, allowing them to better adapt to today’s fast-changing environment.

Learn more here about how to bring this event to your company.

Edited by

Karla Ferreira

Resilience as a Driver of Innovation: The Fuckup Nights Bootcamp for Visa
Pepe Villatoro
Co-Founder
Pepe Villatoro is a globally awarded serial entrepreneur. He has created 5 companies and was the Regional Head of Expansion, in Southern Europe and North Latam. Currently, he collaborates with governments and companies to help create a shift in mindset. He loves traveling, having a good meal, and having good conversations.
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Bring Fuckup Nights to your organization!
Bring Fuckup Nights to your organization!

Let's transform our perception of failure and use it as a catalyst for growth.