Ed Hoffman is Chief Knowledge Officer at NASA. He explained exactly what that means in a session at the Leaders Sport Performance Summit in New York in June.

Over 30 years at NASA, Hoffman has known many a smart person make many a dumb mistake. An organisational psychologist, his job has been to instil a culture of effective communication across a large and complicated organisation, ensuring that dumb mistakes don't lead to catastrophic failure.

"If you don't talk about mistakes," Hoffman explains, "you get failures."