***Failure is the Mother of Success

Mention the word "failure" to almost any group of up-the-corporate-ladder types and you may detect some nervous twitches. For these cube-dwellers, a mistake or setback is often a career-stopper, or, at least, a blot on the record. Playing it safe is seen as the best way to avoid a misstep that could send them sliding down the proverbial career ladder. Yet, talk to an entrepreneur or an enlightened CEO who sees innovation and creativity as the path to profitability and long term sustainability, and they will talk openly about failures, mistakes, and setbacks as steps along the path to success. Seasoned venture capitalists will spend a lot of time delving into an entrepreneur’s past failures because they know that experience with setbacks in high-risk, high-growth ventures makes an entrepreneur more flexible and responsive. In other words, future success stems in part from past mistakes, or even failure. Thomas Edison, one of the post-industrial age’s most prolific inventors, laid the foundation for the Fortune 500 company, General Electric. Edison is remembered, not only for his inventive genius, but also for his high propensity toward failure. Even after he had a long track record of commercial success, he failed miserably in “ Edison’s Folly,” a late-career effort to revolutionize the iron ore processing industry. Despite numerous missteps, he kept trying until he finally succeeded in developing this industry process. As a child, Edison was considered “slow” by his teachers so he had to be home-schooled. Yet this setback--his failure at traditional school-- may have been what allowed Edison to receive the attention and nurturing that led to his curiosity, persistence, and ultimate success. Edison himself acknowledged his failures. “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work,” he would say. Organizations, not just individuals, can also learn from mistakes. Boeing became a success in the passenger jet market with its workhorse, the Boeing 707, by learning from the tragic design flaw in the Comet, the first passenger jet to be extensively used in commercial air travel. By studying metal fatigue design failures in the Comet that literally caused its wings to fall off in mid-flight, Boeing engineered into its 707 the wingspan “flex” that is common to airplane design today. What we can take from successes stories like Thomas Edison is that the path to success has many milestones--some are positive and productive, and some are setbacks. It’s not what we lose from the setbacks, but rather what we learn and apply that make the future a success.nnn

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nSteven Stralser Ph.D. is a Trump University faculty member and author of MBA in a DAY, published by John Wiley & Sons (www.mbainaday.com)