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An anonymous reader writes Google Glass failed. Its self-driving cars might change the world. At Google[x], pursuing the biggest, craziest projects means getting comfortable with failure — and embarrassment. Astro Teller, who leads Google's experimental lab Google[x], embraces the idea that failing fast is a way to learn even faster. "Larry Page told me, a little over two years ago, that he wanted to see us crash at least five of these scale versions of the energy kite. Obviously he wants us to be safe and we work very hard to be safe in everything that we do. What he meant by that was that he wanted to see us push ourselves to learn as fast as possible and though the learning from the crashing itself would be close to zero, he was pointing out that if you aren't failing, if you aren't breaking your experimental equipment at least occasionally, you could be learning faster."
...if you have the financial resources to afford to crash and burn. For most of us there's a significant incubation period that might even require profitability before we can afford to push past the point of safety or reliability and dial it back.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
You learn no more from failure than you learn from success. There are many ways to fail and few ways to succeed, thus it is better to learn what to do than what not to do.
Sure, but the point is that you often can't do the one without the other. Fear of failure tends to cause companies to just stick with what they already do well. That means they basically aren't learning anything at all.
Of course companies should fund the projects that they think are most likely to become profitable. They'll still fail at some of them, and willingness to embrace that increases the odds that they'll come up with something truly innovative.
A boy once asked a successful businessman what makes a man successful?
"Good decisions, my boy, good decisions!"
The boy thought for a moment and then asked how does a man learn how to make good decision?
"Bad decisions, my boy, bad decision."
I've found in life life I learn more from my mistakes than my successes. Similar to how poker players can rarely tell you about all the pots they've won, it's the big ones they lost that stand out in their minds.
Feel free to change gender of the examples. It doesn't change the message.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
You learn no more from failure than you learn from success. There are many ways to fail and few ways to succeed, thus it is better to learn what to do than what not to do.
This is a rational argument applied to the real world, and it doesn't hold true. Rational arguments are almost *never* true when applied to the real world, unless they start from a fundamental model and build up. (And in that case you can make testable predictions.)
Eighty percent of first businesses fail, but only 20% of *second* businesses fail, and it's not because people don't try to do it right the first time.
Both Thomas Edison and [head of IBM] Thomas J. Watson have extensive experience in this, and both have written positions on the subject. When someone approached Watson and asked "how can I increase my success rate", he responded "double your failure rate". When someone asked Edison how he could continue researching the electric light bulb after failing 5,000 times, he replied "I haven't failed 5,000 times, I know 5,000 ways that won't work" (source).
The rational argument fails when it's applied to the risk/reward formulation. Each time you fail you lose 1x the value of the experiment, but each time you succeed you regain 50x the value of the experiment in profit.
The mantra in the IT world is "fail fast, fail often", which reflects the risk-reward equation very well. It takes almost nothing to set up a website showing your idea to the world, and almost nothing to shutter it 6 months later.
But once in awhile, that idea becomes popular and profitable and you can recoup your investment many times over. That's why people should fail; or rather, not be afraid of failure.
Not because of any rationalization, but because it's historically the route to success.
There are many ways to fail and few ways to succeed, thus it is better to learn what to do than what not to do. Failure simply slaps people upside the head and makes them think before trying again. Failure is a learning experience if you didn't plan ahead in the first place.
Here's the rub. You can never plan ahead enough to eliminate failure. Sometimes the cost of planning is not worth the cost of the failure you avoid.
Further, there are many scenarios where failing is not an option (e.g., medical, military, and space ventures). Failure in these areas is seen as a shameful mark worthy of criticism, lawsuits, retaliation, etc. more than it is a learning experience.
Not even a little bit. Failure happens all the time in medicine, military, and space ventures. It doesn't even make sense to assume that these areas where failure is or should be rare. For example, you will eventually die, which indicates that no matter how good or competent medical care is, it will always fail in the end. Military ventures are usually chock full of failure, merely because there are rival parties trying their hardest to make you fail. And every space vehicle has gone through a period of high failure rate in the beginning.
Failure might not be an "option", but it is always present. Learning how to deal with failure rather than engaging in meaningless "shaming" is essential to success in these areas.
You learn no more from failure than you learn from success.
You learn different things from failures than you do from success. For example, a lot of areas such as every scenario you mentioned above, have recurrent failures. So if you analyze existing failures, you might be able to avoid or mitigate these failures in the future. You can't learn that from the successes, only from the failures.
Excellent post. Posting to highlight a point.
"fail FAST, fail often"
Most businesses fail to do the first part and screw up the entire equation. Most bankruptcies, going out of business, bubbles, and mismanagement isn't because of failure. Its the lack of recognition of failure and continued operations that end up eating all the resources and erases the reward altogether.
If you don't fail fast, you will fail once, period.