I was working recently on remarks for an executive presentation on the value of intellectual curiosity. The executive made it very clear that he felt the majority of learning comes from life experiences and it’s important to remember you discover as much from the bad experiences in life as the good ones. He wanted his speech to encourage employees to take risks and ask “Why?” about as many things as they could.
He gave me a few ideas of his own and asked for more examples of how failure led to eventual success. My research turned up some doozies that I thought I’d share (the origin of that term is worth a future entry of its own since its roots are virtually meaningless to a young person today, and even to some from my generation).
There’s an old saying, “Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan.” The fear of failure creates huge roadblocks to learning and achievement. Fear of failure makes people fear anything that might lead to failure. That leads to avoiding risk, taking the safe path. But the road to success is littered with failure, that’s how we truly learn.
Successful Failures
Henry Ford
Henry Ford started two horseless carriage companies that failed before he founded the Ford Motor Company. One of his famous quotes has been a favorite of mine for years: “Failure is simply an opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”
Ray Kroc was in his 50s working as a milkshake mixer salesman. His job took him to many different types of restaurants across the country when he saw the promise of a local California hamburger joint run by two brothers named McDonald who used an assembly-line mentality to provide a hamburger ready in 60 seconds. Kroc used his sales skills and restaurant experience to develop a plan to successfully franchise the concept.
Five years after taking Apple public, co-founder Steve Jobs was ousted by the very man he recruited to lead the company as CEO. Jobs had to start over but he said the freedom of being a beginner again helped him change. He started another computer company, NeXT, made more mistakes and learned even more. When Apple bought that new company and Jobs eventually became Apple CEO again, he used those lessons he had learned to revive the company. It was then that Apple developed most of the innovations it’s famous for today, the iPOD, iPhone, iPad and iTunes.
Innovation is built on failure.
Thomas Edison
Some well-known household names are proof of the “fits and starts” that accompany product innovation.
Researchers developing rust prevention products for the aerospace industry tried 39 formulations that didn’t work as a water displacing compound. Compound number 40 did work. Employees also used the product at home to lubricate and prevent rust, leading the company to put it in aerosol cans and sell it to consumers as WD-40®.
An engineer at 3M trying to develop a new adhesive found one that would stick to some surfaces but could be easily peeled off, or fall off with too much force. What good was a glue that only worked sometimes? Six years later another 3M engineer was looking for a way to keep his place in the hymnal while singing in his church choir. He needed something that could stay in place when needed but be easily moved without damaging the pages. Final development took another six years, but that failed adhesive became Post-It® Notes.
Then there was the glue that stuck too well. While looking for a material to make clear plastic gun sights during World War II, researchers rejected a solution because it was too sticky, it stuck to everything. Years later other researchers saw value in that false step and created a product that became known as Super Glue®.
I find these examples of failure as a necessary ingredient for ultimate success very encouraging. I mean, surely I must have a lot of untapped success out there just waiting for me, right?
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