There is a brand new fashion in management circles. It doesn’t yet have a name so I’m calling it “White is the new black”, because it involves taking something we all think is bad and telling us that it’s good (or vice versa).

Everyone loves this latest fashion. It’s refreshing. It’s counter-intuitive. It’s liberating. And it’s so cool. On LinkedIn and the Harvard Business Review website, readers can’t get their fingers on the “like” button fast enough.

In the past week alone I’ve come across four examples of it. The first and most popular case of white-is-the-new-black says that failure is not bad: it is good. Pushers of this theory, who first appeared a few years ago, have consistently said that mistakes are vital because you learn from them. This is fair enough. What isn’t fair enough is to say that since it’s hard to succeed without failing first, you must therefore aim to fail.