"Fear of failure must never be a reason not to try something."
Fred Smith, founder of Fedex.
He should know...
Smith failed to sell his revolutionary concept of a hub and spoke logistics delivery system countless times, never giving up even in the face of countless rejections, until finally succeeding to set it up himself.
And the rest, as they say, is history (of Fedex)...
Showing posts with label success. Show all posts
Showing posts with label success. Show all posts
Monday, March 31, 2014
Jugoslav Petković on the Art Of Failing Gracefully
Jugoslav Petković talks about his personal "Unexpected Lessons in the Art Of Failing Gracefully" at the Fear & Failure Meetup in Ljubljana
http://bit.ly/1hV50M2 March 2014.
** Petković Video **
** Petković Video **
Monday, March 24, 2014
Failure Conference Roundup
Failure conferences have become all the rage.
On a personal note, I had recently keynoted "Fail Forward 2014" at Loughborough College in England, a first of its kind in the UK, aiming to change the culture, feeling and understanding of failure, by bringing people together and provoking conversation on the subject of failure as a precursor to success.
Here's a short list of recent events around the globe:
April 2014 Failure:Lab, Michigan State U, East Lansing, Michigan
March 2014 Fail Forward 2014, Loughborough UK
March 2014 Failcon NL, Amsterdam, Holland
March 2014 Fear and Failure, Ljubljana, Slovenija
Aware of other conferences and/or seminars on failure?
We'd love to hear from you, drop us a line.
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Google: fAilure Carries No Stigma!
Fast Company recently published a piece describing nine ways through which innovation is encouraged at Google.
GOOGLE REVEALS ITS 9 PRINCIPLES OF INNOVATION.
"Ever wonder what makes the Google the holy grail of productivity and creativity? There's no magic in the drinking water at the Mountain View, CA company. The tech giant draws from what Google's chief social evangelist, Gopi Kallayil, calls the nine core principles of innovation."
And at No. 8:
"8. FAIL WELL
There should be no stigma attached to failure. If you do not fail often, you are not trying hard enough. At Google, once a product fails to reach its potential, it is axed, but the company pulls from the best of the features. "Failure is actually a badge of honor," he [Kallayil] says. "Failure is the way to be innovative and successful. You can fail with pride.""
GOOGLE REVEALS ITS 9 PRINCIPLES OF INNOVATION.
"Ever wonder what makes the Google the holy grail of productivity and creativity? There's no magic in the drinking water at the Mountain View, CA company. The tech giant draws from what Google's chief social evangelist, Gopi Kallayil, calls the nine core principles of innovation."
And at No. 8:
"8. FAIL WELL
There should be no stigma attached to failure. If you do not fail often, you are not trying hard enough. At Google, once a product fails to reach its potential, it is axed, but the company pulls from the best of the features. "Failure is actually a badge of honor," he [Kallayil] says. "Failure is the way to be innovative and successful. You can fail with pride.""
Saturday, February 15, 2014
The Right Perspective
"The Biggest Difference Between Failure and Success is the Perspective"
Mark E. Walker, Strategist
Mark E. Walker, Strategist
A Collection of Quotes on Failure and Success
"A Quote-a-day keeps failure away..." :-)
Erik A. Steiner, Innovator and Entrepreneur
"Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It's courage that counts."
John Wooden, Basketball Player & Coach
"I Can Accept Failure, Everyone Fails At Something. But I Can't Accept Not Trying Again."
Michael Jordan, Basketball Player
“It is failure that guides evolution; perfection provides no incentive for improvement, and nothing is perfect.”
Colson Whitehead, Novelist
"Success is most often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable."
Coco Chanel, Fashion Designer
"Failure is success if we learn from it."
Malcolm Forbes, Publisher
"Failure defeats losers, failure inspires winners."
Robert T. Kiyosaki, Investor, Businessman, Author
“If something fails despite being carefully planned, carefully designed, and conscientiously executed, that failure often bespeaks underlying change and, with it, opportunity.”
Peter F. Drucker, Author and Leading Management Thinker
"Fail Forward Fast.
It is far better to have sloppy success than to have perfect procrastination. It is easy to get caught up in the endless tinkering and perfecting of a project. It is true some things require perfection – most simply need excellence. All need action today!
Do you find yourself waiting to launch important projects? Are you forever splitting hairs about elements that are not mission critical. Do you spend hours and hours on details that don’t matter much?
Start your Monday with action! In taking action you may fail – but even that failure will move you forward toward ultimate success. Pick a project you have been putting off and begin today to take the action which will accelerate your path to achievement."
Tom Peters, "Father" of All Business Gurus, Incredible Guy
"Life is pretty simple:
You do some stuff.
Most fails.
Some works.
You do more of what works.
If it works big, others quickly copy it.
Then you do something else.
The trick is the doing something else."
Tom Peters, "Father" of All Business Gurus, Incredible Guy
"If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is often a step forward."
Thomas Edison, American Inventor and Businessman
“Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorius triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US President
Thoughts from Guy Kawasaki:
"Let’s say a startup is hot. It ships something great, and it achieves success. Thus, it’s able to attract the best, brightest, and most talented. These people have been told they’re the best since childhood. Indeed, being hired by the hot company is “proof” that they are the A and A+ players; in fact, the company is so hot that it can out-recruit Google and Microsoft.
Unfortunately, they develop a fixed mindset that they’re the most talented, and they think that continued success is a right. Problems arise because pure talent only works as long as the going is easy. Furthermore, they don’t take risks because failure would harm their image of being the best, brightest, and most talented. When they do fail, they deny it or attribute it to anything but their shortcomings.
And this is the beginning of the end."
(Source: The Effort Effect)
Guy Kawasaki, Author, Speaker and Investor
"Ambitious failure, magnificent failure, is a very good thing."
Guy Kawasaki, Author, Speaker and Investor
"We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails."
Bertha Calloway, Founder of the Great Plains Black Museum
"Failure isn't fatal, but failure to change might be."
John Wooden, American Basketball player and coach
"Success is never permanent, and failure is never final."
Mike Ditka, former American football NFL player, television commentator, and coach
"Make failure your teacher, not your undertaker."
Zig Ziglar, Motivational Speaker
"Failure is a detour not a dead end street."
Zig Ziglar, Motivational Speaker
"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
Pablo Picasso, Artist
"Failure is the price of excellence."
Leonard Pitts, Jr., Pulitzer prize winning commentator
"We learn from failure, not from success!"
Bram Stoker, Author (Dracula!)
"When I was young, I observed that nine out of 10 things I did were failures, so I did 10 times more work."
George Bernard Shaw, Playwright
"Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at something that doesn't really matter.”
Dwight L Moody, Evangelist
"Persistence can change #failure into extraordinary achievement."
Matt Biondi, Olympic Athlete, Swimmer
"Many people dream of success. To me succes can only be achieved through repeated failure and introspection. In fact, success represents the one percent of your work that results from the ninety-nine percent that is called failure."
Soichiro Honda, Engineer, Founder of Honda Motor Company (aka "Honda")
As quoted in The Power of Failure: 27 Ways to Turn Life's Setbacks into Success
"Failure is the foundation of success, and the means by which it is achieved."
Lao Tzu, Philosopher
As quoted in The Power of Failure: 27 Ways to Turn Life's Setbacks into Success
"The Achilles heel of failure: hindsight is 20/20."
Erik A. Steiner, Innovator and Entrepreneur
This time, a poem... IF by Rudyard Kipling
IF
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!
Rudyard Kipling, short-story writer, poet, novelist
"Only he who does nothing makes no mistakes."
French Proverb
As quoted in The Power of Failure: 27 Ways to Turn Life's Setbacks into Success
"He that is overcautious will accomplish little."
Friedrich von Schiller, Poet, Philosopher, Historian and Playwright
As quoted in The Ten Commandments for Business Failure
"For this is the tragedy of man-circumstances change, but he doesn't."
Machiavelli, Historian, Politician, Diplomat, Philosopher, Humanist and Writer
As quoted in The Ten Commandments for Business Failure
"In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure."
Bill Cosby, Comedian
Referring to every well-educated person, Charles Kettering, one of America's greatest inventors and innovators of all time, said, "...it is not a disgrace to fail, and that he must analyze each failure to find its cause...must learn how to fail intelligently. Failing is one of the greatest arts in the world. One fails towards success."
Charles Kettering, Inventor
Quoted in Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins
"Being successful is kind of dull."
Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari
Quoted in Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins
Tom Crouch writing about the Wright Brothers...
"They were as excited about failure as they were by success."
(from The Bishop's Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright
)
The Wright Brothers
Tom Crouch
"One must be God to be able to distinguish successes from failures and not make mistakes."
Anton Chekov
"Good men are still liable to make mistakes, and are sometimes warmly engaged in errors, which they take for divine truths, shining in their minds with the clearest light."
John Locke
"If there is a single tragic flaw that mars our biggest enterprises, it is conservatism - the failure to fail, and fail big, in an era of unprecedented volatility and ambiguity."
Tom Peters
"Failure in Innovation - it's a price worth paying."
Tim Harford (from: Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure
. New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2011)
Man has been writing of failure since biblical times. Here we go back to the time of Aristotle, to a controversial quote that I do not believe does justice to reality:
"It is possible to fail in many ways...while to succeed is possible only in one way."
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, II, 6
"I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest."
John Keats, one of the greatest and most important poets in the history of mankind - born in 1795, he died so so young, only 26. One hesitates to think what Keats would have accomplished in a full lifetime...the following are ruminations from a letter written to one James Hessey on October 8, 1818:
"The Genius of Poetry must work out its own salvation in a man: It cannot be matured by law & precept, but by sensation ad watchfulness in itself - That which is creative must create itself - In Endymion, I leaped headlong into the Sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the Soundings, the quicksands, & the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea & comfortable advice. I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest."
John Keats
Mark Zbaracki, at the time a professor at NYU, wrote a nice little piece titled "Success, Failure and the Race of Truth" for the Journal of Management Inquiry back in September of 2006. Thought I'd pull a nice quote from there:
"...those moments when life sends us sliding along the pavement or tumbling over the handlebars are gifts, opportunities for clarity..."
Mark J. Zbaracki
Here's John Adams writing on failure in 1755 (!):
(I received this newest volume from the Library of America today - the man was only twenty years old when he inferred and wrote the following and much more. Incredible. The strange spelling, capitalizations etc. as in the original text)
"If we look into History we shall find some nations rising from contemptible beginnings, and spreading their influence, 'till the whole Globe is subjected to their sway. When they have reach'd the summit of Grandeur, some minute and unsuspected Cause commonly affects their Ruin, and the Empire of the world is transferr'd to some other place. Immortal Rome was at first but an insignificant Village, inhabited only be a few abandoned Ruffins, but by degrees it rose to a stupendous Height, and excell'd in Arts and Arms all the nations that praeceeded it. But the demolition of Carthage (what one should think would have establish'd it in supream dominion) by removing all danger, suffer'd to sink into debauchery, and made it att length an easy prey to Barbarians."
John Adams, Revolutionary Writings, 1755-1775
"There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life."
T H Huxley, On Medical Education (1870)
"83 percent of Chief Executive Officers fail."
Lucy Kellaway, writing for the Financial Times
"Failure is good. It's fertilizer. Everything I've learned about coaching I've learned from making mistakes."
Rick Pitino, NBA Coach
"We are all failures - at least, all the best of us are."
J. M. Barrie
“Ever tried.
Ever failed.
No matter.
Try again.
Fail again.
Fail better."
Samuel Beckett
Erik A. Steiner, Innovator and Entrepreneur
"Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It's courage that counts."
John Wooden, Basketball Player & Coach
"I Can Accept Failure, Everyone Fails At Something. But I Can't Accept Not Trying Again."
Michael Jordan, Basketball Player
“It is failure that guides evolution; perfection provides no incentive for improvement, and nothing is perfect.”
Colson Whitehead, Novelist
"Success is most often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable."
Coco Chanel, Fashion Designer
"Failure is success if we learn from it."
Malcolm Forbes, Publisher
"Failure defeats losers, failure inspires winners."
Robert T. Kiyosaki, Investor, Businessman, Author
“If something fails despite being carefully planned, carefully designed, and conscientiously executed, that failure often bespeaks underlying change and, with it, opportunity.”
Peter F. Drucker, Author and Leading Management Thinker
"Fail Forward Fast.
It is far better to have sloppy success than to have perfect procrastination. It is easy to get caught up in the endless tinkering and perfecting of a project. It is true some things require perfection – most simply need excellence. All need action today!
Do you find yourself waiting to launch important projects? Are you forever splitting hairs about elements that are not mission critical. Do you spend hours and hours on details that don’t matter much?
Start your Monday with action! In taking action you may fail – but even that failure will move you forward toward ultimate success. Pick a project you have been putting off and begin today to take the action which will accelerate your path to achievement."
Tom Peters, "Father" of All Business Gurus, Incredible Guy
"Life is pretty simple:
You do some stuff.
Most fails.
Some works.
You do more of what works.
If it works big, others quickly copy it.
Then you do something else.
The trick is the doing something else."
Tom Peters, "Father" of All Business Gurus, Incredible Guy
"If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is often a step forward."
Thomas Edison, American Inventor and Businessman
“Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorius triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US President
Thoughts from Guy Kawasaki:
"Let’s say a startup is hot. It ships something great, and it achieves success. Thus, it’s able to attract the best, brightest, and most talented. These people have been told they’re the best since childhood. Indeed, being hired by the hot company is “proof” that they are the A and A+ players; in fact, the company is so hot that it can out-recruit Google and Microsoft.
Unfortunately, they develop a fixed mindset that they’re the most talented, and they think that continued success is a right. Problems arise because pure talent only works as long as the going is easy. Furthermore, they don’t take risks because failure would harm their image of being the best, brightest, and most talented. When they do fail, they deny it or attribute it to anything but their shortcomings.
And this is the beginning of the end."
(Source: The Effort Effect)
Guy Kawasaki, Author, Speaker and Investor
"Ambitious failure, magnificent failure, is a very good thing."
Guy Kawasaki, Author, Speaker and Investor
"We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails."
Bertha Calloway, Founder of the Great Plains Black Museum
"Failure isn't fatal, but failure to change might be."
John Wooden, American Basketball player and coach
"Success is never permanent, and failure is never final."
Mike Ditka, former American football NFL player, television commentator, and coach
"Make failure your teacher, not your undertaker."
Zig Ziglar, Motivational Speaker
"Failure is a detour not a dead end street."
Zig Ziglar, Motivational Speaker
"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
Pablo Picasso, Artist
"Failure is the price of excellence."
Leonard Pitts, Jr., Pulitzer prize winning commentator
"We learn from failure, not from success!"
Bram Stoker, Author (Dracula!)
"When I was young, I observed that nine out of 10 things I did were failures, so I did 10 times more work."
George Bernard Shaw, Playwright
"Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at something that doesn't really matter.”
Dwight L Moody, Evangelist
"Persistence can change #failure into extraordinary achievement."
Matt Biondi, Olympic Athlete, Swimmer
"Many people dream of success. To me succes can only be achieved through repeated failure and introspection. In fact, success represents the one percent of your work that results from the ninety-nine percent that is called failure."
Soichiro Honda, Engineer, Founder of Honda Motor Company (aka "Honda")
As quoted in The Power of Failure: 27 Ways to Turn Life's Setbacks into Success
"Failure is the foundation of success, and the means by which it is achieved."
Lao Tzu, Philosopher
As quoted in The Power of Failure: 27 Ways to Turn Life's Setbacks into Success
"The Achilles heel of failure: hindsight is 20/20."
Erik A. Steiner, Innovator and Entrepreneur
This time, a poem... IF by Rudyard Kipling
IF
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!
Rudyard Kipling, short-story writer, poet, novelist
"Only he who does nothing makes no mistakes."
French Proverb
As quoted in The Power of Failure: 27 Ways to Turn Life's Setbacks into Success
"He that is overcautious will accomplish little."
Friedrich von Schiller, Poet, Philosopher, Historian and Playwright
As quoted in The Ten Commandments for Business Failure
"For this is the tragedy of man-circumstances change, but he doesn't."
Machiavelli, Historian, Politician, Diplomat, Philosopher, Humanist and Writer
As quoted in The Ten Commandments for Business Failure
"In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure."
Bill Cosby, Comedian
Referring to every well-educated person, Charles Kettering, one of America's greatest inventors and innovators of all time, said, "...it is not a disgrace to fail, and that he must analyze each failure to find its cause...must learn how to fail intelligently. Failing is one of the greatest arts in the world. One fails towards success."
Charles Kettering, Inventor
Quoted in Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins
"Being successful is kind of dull."
Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari
Quoted in Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins
Tom Crouch writing about the Wright Brothers...
"They were as excited about failure as they were by success."
(from The Bishop's Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright
)The Wright Brothers
Tom Crouch
"One must be God to be able to distinguish successes from failures and not make mistakes."
Anton Chekov
"Good men are still liable to make mistakes, and are sometimes warmly engaged in errors, which they take for divine truths, shining in their minds with the clearest light."
John Locke
"If there is a single tragic flaw that mars our biggest enterprises, it is conservatism - the failure to fail, and fail big, in an era of unprecedented volatility and ambiguity."
Tom Peters
"Failure in Innovation - it's a price worth paying."
Tim Harford (from: Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure
. New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2011)
Man has been writing of failure since biblical times. Here we go back to the time of Aristotle, to a controversial quote that I do not believe does justice to reality:
"It is possible to fail in many ways...while to succeed is possible only in one way."
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, II, 6
"I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest."
John Keats, one of the greatest and most important poets in the history of mankind - born in 1795, he died so so young, only 26. One hesitates to think what Keats would have accomplished in a full lifetime...the following are ruminations from a letter written to one James Hessey on October 8, 1818:
"The Genius of Poetry must work out its own salvation in a man: It cannot be matured by law & precept, but by sensation ad watchfulness in itself - That which is creative must create itself - In Endymion, I leaped headlong into the Sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the Soundings, the quicksands, & the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea & comfortable advice. I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest."
John Keats
Mark Zbaracki, at the time a professor at NYU, wrote a nice little piece titled "Success, Failure and the Race of Truth" for the Journal of Management Inquiry back in September of 2006. Thought I'd pull a nice quote from there:
"...those moments when life sends us sliding along the pavement or tumbling over the handlebars are gifts, opportunities for clarity..."
Mark J. Zbaracki
Here's John Adams writing on failure in 1755 (!):
(I received this newest volume from the Library of America today - the man was only twenty years old when he inferred and wrote the following and much more. Incredible. The strange spelling, capitalizations etc. as in the original text)
"If we look into History we shall find some nations rising from contemptible beginnings, and spreading their influence, 'till the whole Globe is subjected to their sway. When they have reach'd the summit of Grandeur, some minute and unsuspected Cause commonly affects their Ruin, and the Empire of the world is transferr'd to some other place. Immortal Rome was at first but an insignificant Village, inhabited only be a few abandoned Ruffins, but by degrees it rose to a stupendous Height, and excell'd in Arts and Arms all the nations that praeceeded it. But the demolition of Carthage (what one should think would have establish'd it in supream dominion) by removing all danger, suffer'd to sink into debauchery, and made it att length an easy prey to Barbarians."
John Adams, Revolutionary Writings, 1755-1775
"There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life."
T H Huxley, On Medical Education (1870)
"83 percent of Chief Executive Officers fail."
Lucy Kellaway, writing for the Financial Times
"Failure is good. It's fertilizer. Everything I've learned about coaching I've learned from making mistakes."
Rick Pitino, NBA Coach
"We are all failures - at least, all the best of us are."
J. M. Barrie
“Ever tried.
Ever failed.
No matter.
Try again.
Fail again.
Fail better."
Samuel Beckett
Friday, November 29, 2013
A History of Design @ Apple
Part I: An Oral History Of Apple Design: 1992 "The greatest business story of this generation is a design tale."
Part II: An Oral History Of Apple Design: 2000 Steve had to have control over anything and everything that had to do with his products.
Part III: An Oral History Of Apple Design: 2001 Apple Design becomes experimental.
Part IV: An Oral History Of Apple Design: 2004 Perfecting the iPod.
Part V: An Oral History Of Apple Design: 2010 Milking the cash cows.
Part VI: An Oral History Of Apple Design: 2013 After Steve's death, Apple loses focus. Coming soon: the iWash, an iPod controlled washing machine... :-)
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Saturday, October 26, 2013
26 Successful People who Failed at First
26 Successful People who Failed at First
Typically those who dare learn so much from first failures that they come back as a roaring success - from a great little piece on Business Insider here are 26 famous ones including:
Follow on twitter: Steiner on Failure
Typically those who dare learn so much from first failures that they come back as a roaring success - from a great little piece on Business Insider here are 26 famous ones including:
- Marilyn Monroe
- Winston Churchill
- Thomas Edison
- and more...
Follow on twitter: Steiner on Failure
Friday, October 25, 2013
From Discover - 20 Things you Didn't Know About Failure
20 things you didn't know about failure
Google actively invests in promoting failure, Ford had far worse ideas than the Edsel, and failure as a whole follows a power law - i.e. can be proven mathematically and expected. For more - click over to the article.
Google actively invests in promoting failure, Ford had far worse ideas than the Edsel, and failure as a whole follows a power law - i.e. can be proven mathematically and expected. For more - click over to the article.
Thursday, October 24, 2013
A Collection of Quotes on Failure and Success
"A Quote-a-day keeps failure away..." :-)
Erik A. Steiner, Innovator and Entrepreneur
Nov 24, 2013
“If something fails despite being carefully planned, carefully designed, and conscientiously executed, that failure often bespeaks underlying change and, with it, opportunity.”
Peter F. Drucker, Author and Leading Management Thinker
Nov 18, 2013
"Fail Forward Fast.
It is far better to have sloppy success than to have perfect procrastination. It is easy to get caught up in the endless tinkering and perfecting of a project. It is true some things require perfection – most simply need excellence. All need action today!
Do you find yourself waiting to launch important projects? Are you forever splitting hairs about elements that are not mission critical. Do you spend hours and hours on details that don’t matter much?
Start your Monday with action! In taking action you may fail – but even that failure will move you forward toward ultimate success. Pick a project you have been putting off and begin today to take the action which will accelerate your path to achievement. "
Tom Peters, "Father" of All Business Gurus, Incredible Guy
Nov 17, 2013
"Life is pretty simple:
You do some stuff.
Most fails.
Some works.
You do more of what works.
If it works big, others quickly copy it.
Then you do something else.
The trick is the doing something else."
Tom Peters, "Father" of All Business Gurus, Incredible Guy
Nov 3, 2013
"If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is often a step forward."
Thomas Edison, American Inventor and Businessman
Nov 2, 2013
“Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorius triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US President
Oct 26, 2013
Thoughts from Guy Kawasaki:
"Let’s say a startup is hot. It ships something great, and it achieves success. Thus, it’s able to attract the best, brightest, and most talented. These people have been told they’re the best since childhood. Indeed, being hired by the hot company is “proof” that they are the A and A+ players; in fact, the company is so hot that it can out-recruit Google and Microsoft.
Unfortunately, they develop a fixed mindset that they’re the most talented, and they think that continued success is a right. Problems arise because pure talent only works as long as the going is easy. Furthermore, they don’t take risks because failure would harm their image of being the best, brightest, and most talented. When they do fail, they deny it or attribute it to anything but their shortcomings.
And this is the beginning of the end."
(Source: The Effort Effect)
Guy Kawasaki, Author, Speaker and Investor
Oct 25, 2013
"Ambitious failure, magnificent failure, is a very good thing."
Guy Kawasaki, Author, Speaker and Investor
Oct 24, 2013
"We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails."
Bertha Calloway, Founder of the Great Plains Black Museum
Oct 23, 2013
"Failure isn't fatal, but failure to change might be."
John Wooden, American Basketball player and coach
Oct 22, 2013
"Success is never permanent, and failure is never final."
Mike Ditka, former American football NFL player, television commentator, and coach
Oct 21, 2013
"Make failure your teacher, not your undertaker."
Zig Ziglar, Motivational Speaker
Oct 20, 2013
"Failure is a detour not a dead end street."
Zig Ziglar, Motivational Speaker
Oct 19, 2013
"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
Pablo Picasso, Artist
Oct 16, 2013
"Failure is the price of excellence."
Leonard Pitts, Jr., Pulitzer prize winning commentator
Oct 12, 2013
"We learn from failure, not from success!"
Bram Stoker, Author (Dracula!)
Oct 11, 2013
"When I was young, I observed that nine out of 10 things I did were failures, so I did 10 times more work."
George Bernard Shaw, Playwright
Oct 10, 2013
"Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at something that doesn't really matter.”
Dwight L Moody, Evangelist
Oct 9, 2013
"I thrive on failure. I thrive on things that are not perfect. It sends me back into the ring to get it right.”
Tom Ford, Designer
September 8th 2013
"Persistence can change #failure into extraordinary achievement."
Matt Biondi, Olympic Athlete, Swimmer
Dec 19, 2012
"Many people dream of success. To me succes can only be achieved through repeated failure and introspection. In fact, success represents the one percent of your work that results from the ninety-nine percent that is called failure."
Soichiro Honda, Engineer, Founder of Honda Motor Company (aka "Honda")
As quoted in The Power of Failure: 27 Ways to Turn Life's Setbacks into Success
Dec 15, 2012
"Failure is the foundation of success, and the means by which it is achieved."
Lao Tzu, Philosopher
As quoted in The Power of Failure: 27 Ways to Turn Life's Setbacks into Success
Dec 14, 2012
"The Achilles heel of failure: hindsight is 20/20."
Erik A. Steiner, Innovator and Entrepreneur
Dec 13, 2012
This time, a poem... IF by Rudyard Kipling
IF
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!
Rudyard Kipling, short-story writer, poet, novelist
Dec 12, 2012
"Only he who does nothing makes no mistakes."
French Proverb
As quoted in The Power of Failure: 27 Ways to Turn Life's Setbacks into Success
Dec 9, 2012
"He that is overcautious will accomplish little."
Friedrich von Schiller, Poet, Philosopher, Historian and Playwright
As quoted in The Ten Commandments for Business Failure
Dec 8, 2012
"For this is the tragedy of man-circumstances change, but he doesn't."
Machiavelli, Historian, Politician, Diplomat, Philosopher, Humanist and Writer
As quoted in The Ten Commandments for Business Failure
Dec 2, 2012
"In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure."
Bill Cosby, Comedian
Dec 1, 2012
Referring to every well-educated person, Charles Kettering, one of America's greatest inventors and innovators of all time, said, "...it is not a disgrace to fail, and that he must analyze each failure to find its cause...must learn how to fail intelligently. Failing is one of the greatest arts in the world. One fails towards success."
Charles Kettering, Inventor
Quoted in Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins
Nov 12, 2012
"Being successful is kind of dull."
Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari
Quoted in Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins
Nolan Bushnell
Nov 11, 2012
Tom Crouch writing about the Wright Brothers...
"They were as excited about failure as they were by success."
(from The Bishop's Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright)
The Wright Brothers
Tom Crouch
Nov 10, 2012
"One must be God to be able to distinguish successes from failures and not make mistakes."
Anton Chekov
Nov 9, 2012
"Good men are still liable to make mistakes, and are sometimes warmly engaged in errors, which they take for divine truths, shining in their minds with the clearest light."
John Locke
Oct 29, 2012
"If there is a single tragic flaw that mars our biggest enterprises, it is conservatism - the failure to fail, and fail big, in an era of unprecedented volatility and ambiguity."
Tom Peters Oct 17, 2012
"Failure in Innovation - it's a price worth paying."
Tim Harford (from: Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure
. New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2011)
Oct 15, 2012
Man has been writing of failure since biblical times. Here we go back to the time of Aristotle, to a controversial quote that I do not believe does justice to reality:
"It is possible to fail in many ways...while to succeed is possible only in one way."
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, II, 6
Oct 14, 2012
"I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest."
John Keats, one of the greatest and most important poets in the history of mankind - born in 1795, he died so so young, only 26. One hesitates to think what Keats would have accomplished in a full lifetime...the following are ruminations from a letter written to one James Hessey on October 8, 1818:
"The Genius of Poetry must work out its own salvation in a man: It cannot be matured by law & precept, but by sensation ad watchfulness in itself - That which is creative must create itself - In Endymion, I leaped headlong into the Sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the Soundings, the quicksands, & the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea & comfortable advice. I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest."
John Keats
Oct 13, 2012
Mark Zbaracki, at the time a professor at NYU, wrote a nice little piece titled "Success, Failure and the Race of Truth" for the Journal of Management Inquiry back in September of 2006. Thought I'd pull a nice quote from there:
"...those moments when life sends us sliding along the pavement or tumbling over the handlebars are gifts, opportunities for clarity..."
Mark J. Zbaracki
Oct 12, 2012
Here's John Adams writing on failure in 1755 (!):
(I received this newest volume from the Library of America today - the man was only twenty years old when he inferred and wrote the following and much more. Incredible. The strange spelling, capitalizations etc. as in the original text)
"If we look into History we shall find some nations rising from contemptible beginnings, and spreading their influence, 'till the whole Globe is subjected to their sway. When they have reach'd the summit of Grandeur, some minute and unsuspected Cause commonly affects their Ruin, and the Empire of the world is transferr'd to some other place. Immortal Rome was at first but an insignificant Village, inhabited only be a few abandoned Ruffins, but by degrees it rose to a stupendous Height, and excell'd in Arts and Arms all the nations that praeceeded it. But the demolition of Carthage (what one should think would have establish'd it in supream dominion) by removing all danger, suffer'd to sink into debauchery, and made it att length an easy prey to Barbarians."
John Adams, Revolutionary Writings, 1755-1775
"There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life."
T H Huxley, On Medical Education (1870)
Oct 10, 2012
"83 percent of Chief Executive Officers fail."
Lucy Kellaway, writing for the Financial Times Oct 9, 2012
"Failure is good. It's fertilizer. Everything I've learned about coaching I've learned from making mistakes."
Rick Pitino, NBA Coach
Oct 8, 2012 - Today I've decided to start up a compendium of my favorite quotes on failure - I'll be making a valiant attempt to post one-a-day (A quote a day keeps the failure away?? :-)
Here's the first one for you all - from the creator of Peter Pan no less:
"We are all failures - at least, all the best of us are."
J. M. Barrie
Just came across this on Gotham so here's another one for today:
“Ever tried.
Ever failed.
No matter.
Try again.
Fail again.
Fail better."
Samuel Beckett
Erik A. Steiner, Innovator and Entrepreneur
“If something fails despite being carefully planned, carefully designed, and conscientiously executed, that failure often bespeaks underlying change and, with it, opportunity.”
Peter F. Drucker, Author and Leading Management Thinker
"Fail Forward Fast.
It is far better to have sloppy success than to have perfect procrastination. It is easy to get caught up in the endless tinkering and perfecting of a project. It is true some things require perfection – most simply need excellence. All need action today!
Do you find yourself waiting to launch important projects? Are you forever splitting hairs about elements that are not mission critical. Do you spend hours and hours on details that don’t matter much?
Start your Monday with action! In taking action you may fail – but even that failure will move you forward toward ultimate success. Pick a project you have been putting off and begin today to take the action which will accelerate your path to achievement. "
Tom Peters, "Father" of All Business Gurus, Incredible Guy
Nov 17, 2013
"Life is pretty simple:
You do some stuff.
Most fails.
Some works.
You do more of what works.
If it works big, others quickly copy it.
Then you do something else.
The trick is the doing something else."
Tom Peters, "Father" of All Business Gurus, Incredible Guy
"If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is often a step forward."
Thomas Edison, American Inventor and Businessman
“Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorius triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US President
Oct 26, 2013
Thoughts from Guy Kawasaki:
"Let’s say a startup is hot. It ships something great, and it achieves success. Thus, it’s able to attract the best, brightest, and most talented. These people have been told they’re the best since childhood. Indeed, being hired by the hot company is “proof” that they are the A and A+ players; in fact, the company is so hot that it can out-recruit Google and Microsoft.
Unfortunately, they develop a fixed mindset that they’re the most talented, and they think that continued success is a right. Problems arise because pure talent only works as long as the going is easy. Furthermore, they don’t take risks because failure would harm their image of being the best, brightest, and most talented. When they do fail, they deny it or attribute it to anything but their shortcomings.
And this is the beginning of the end."
(Source: The Effort Effect)
Guy Kawasaki, Author, Speaker and Investor
Oct 25, 2013
"Ambitious failure, magnificent failure, is a very good thing."
Guy Kawasaki, Author, Speaker and Investor
Oct 24, 2013
"We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails."
Bertha Calloway, Founder of the Great Plains Black Museum
Oct 23, 2013
"Failure isn't fatal, but failure to change might be."
John Wooden, American Basketball player and coach
Oct 22, 2013
"Success is never permanent, and failure is never final."
Mike Ditka, former American football NFL player, television commentator, and coach
Oct 21, 2013
"Make failure your teacher, not your undertaker."
Zig Ziglar, Motivational Speaker
Oct 20, 2013
"Failure is a detour not a dead end street."
Zig Ziglar, Motivational Speaker
"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
Pablo Picasso, Artist
Oct 16, 2013
"Failure is the price of excellence."
Leonard Pitts, Jr., Pulitzer prize winning commentator
Oct 12, 2013
"We learn from failure, not from success!"
Bram Stoker, Author (Dracula!)
Oct 11, 2013
"When I was young, I observed that nine out of 10 things I did were failures, so I did 10 times more work."
George Bernard Shaw, Playwright
Oct 10, 2013
"Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at something that doesn't really matter.”
Dwight L Moody, Evangelist
Oct 9, 2013
"I thrive on failure. I thrive on things that are not perfect. It sends me back into the ring to get it right.”
Tom Ford, Designer
September 8th 2013
"Persistence can change #failure into extraordinary achievement."
Matt Biondi, Olympic Athlete, Swimmer
Dec 19, 2012
"Many people dream of success. To me succes can only be achieved through repeated failure and introspection. In fact, success represents the one percent of your work that results from the ninety-nine percent that is called failure."
Soichiro Honda, Engineer, Founder of Honda Motor Company (aka "Honda")
As quoted in The Power of Failure: 27 Ways to Turn Life's Setbacks into Success
Dec 15, 2012
"Failure is the foundation of success, and the means by which it is achieved."
Lao Tzu, Philosopher
As quoted in The Power of Failure: 27 Ways to Turn Life's Setbacks into Success
Dec 14, 2012
"The Achilles heel of failure: hindsight is 20/20."
Erik A. Steiner, Innovator and Entrepreneur
Dec 13, 2012
This time, a poem... IF by Rudyard Kipling
IF
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!
Rudyard Kipling, short-story writer, poet, novelist
Dec 12, 2012
"Only he who does nothing makes no mistakes."
French Proverb
As quoted in The Power of Failure: 27 Ways to Turn Life's Setbacks into Success
Dec 9, 2012
"He that is overcautious will accomplish little."
Friedrich von Schiller, Poet, Philosopher, Historian and Playwright
As quoted in The Ten Commandments for Business Failure
Dec 8, 2012
"For this is the tragedy of man-circumstances change, but he doesn't."
Machiavelli, Historian, Politician, Diplomat, Philosopher, Humanist and Writer
As quoted in The Ten Commandments for Business Failure
Dec 2, 2012
"In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure."
Bill Cosby, Comedian
Dec 1, 2012
Referring to every well-educated person, Charles Kettering, one of America's greatest inventors and innovators of all time, said, "...it is not a disgrace to fail, and that he must analyze each failure to find its cause...must learn how to fail intelligently. Failing is one of the greatest arts in the world. One fails towards success."
Charles Kettering, Inventor
Quoted in Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins
Nov 12, 2012
"Being successful is kind of dull."
Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari
Quoted in Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins
Nolan Bushnell
Nov 11, 2012
Tom Crouch writing about the Wright Brothers...
"They were as excited about failure as they were by success."
(from The Bishop's Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright
)The Wright Brothers
Tom Crouch
Nov 10, 2012
"One must be God to be able to distinguish successes from failures and not make mistakes."
Anton Chekov
Nov 9, 2012
"Good men are still liable to make mistakes, and are sometimes warmly engaged in errors, which they take for divine truths, shining in their minds with the clearest light."
John Locke
Oct 29, 2012
"If there is a single tragic flaw that mars our biggest enterprises, it is conservatism - the failure to fail, and fail big, in an era of unprecedented volatility and ambiguity."
Tom Peters Oct 17, 2012
"Failure in Innovation - it's a price worth paying."
Tim Harford (from: Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure
. New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2011)
Oct 15, 2012
Man has been writing of failure since biblical times. Here we go back to the time of Aristotle, to a controversial quote that I do not believe does justice to reality:
"It is possible to fail in many ways...while to succeed is possible only in one way."
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, II, 6
Oct 14, 2012
"I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest."
John Keats, one of the greatest and most important poets in the history of mankind - born in 1795, he died so so young, only 26. One hesitates to think what Keats would have accomplished in a full lifetime...the following are ruminations from a letter written to one James Hessey on October 8, 1818:
"The Genius of Poetry must work out its own salvation in a man: It cannot be matured by law & precept, but by sensation ad watchfulness in itself - That which is creative must create itself - In Endymion, I leaped headlong into the Sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the Soundings, the quicksands, & the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea & comfortable advice. I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest."
John Keats
Oct 13, 2012
Mark Zbaracki, at the time a professor at NYU, wrote a nice little piece titled "Success, Failure and the Race of Truth" for the Journal of Management Inquiry back in September of 2006. Thought I'd pull a nice quote from there:
"...those moments when life sends us sliding along the pavement or tumbling over the handlebars are gifts, opportunities for clarity..."
Mark J. Zbaracki
Oct 12, 2012
Here's John Adams writing on failure in 1755 (!):
(I received this newest volume from the Library of America today - the man was only twenty years old when he inferred and wrote the following and much more. Incredible. The strange spelling, capitalizations etc. as in the original text)
"If we look into History we shall find some nations rising from contemptible beginnings, and spreading their influence, 'till the whole Globe is subjected to their sway. When they have reach'd the summit of Grandeur, some minute and unsuspected Cause commonly affects their Ruin, and the Empire of the world is transferr'd to some other place. Immortal Rome was at first but an insignificant Village, inhabited only be a few abandoned Ruffins, but by degrees it rose to a stupendous Height, and excell'd in Arts and Arms all the nations that praeceeded it. But the demolition of Carthage (what one should think would have establish'd it in supream dominion) by removing all danger, suffer'd to sink into debauchery, and made it att length an easy prey to Barbarians."
John Adams, Revolutionary Writings, 1755-1775
"There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life."
T H Huxley, On Medical Education (1870)
Oct 10, 2012
"83 percent of Chief Executive Officers fail."
Lucy Kellaway, writing for the Financial Times Oct 9, 2012
"Failure is good. It's fertilizer. Everything I've learned about coaching I've learned from making mistakes."
Rick Pitino, NBA Coach
Oct 8, 2012 - Today I've decided to start up a compendium of my favorite quotes on failure - I'll be making a valiant attempt to post one-a-day (A quote a day keeps the failure away?? :-)
Here's the first one for you all - from the creator of Peter Pan no less:
"We are all failures - at least, all the best of us are."
J. M. Barrie
Just came across this on Gotham so here's another one for today:
“Ever tried.
Ever failed.
No matter.
Try again.
Fail again.
Fail better."
Samuel Beckett
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Microsoft Flops and Failures
But along the way, as we all know and realize all too well, Microsoft has managed to fail miserably, again and again - and to fail in market spaces it should have understood better than anyone else on the planet...
Here are some "nostalgic" :-) examples of Microsoft flops and failures:
1) 1982-1990 - Windows 1.0, all versions up and leading to Windows 3.0 (for a brief history of the Windows O/S - click here)
2) 1995 - Microsoft Bob...According to Fast Company: "Childish, convoluted, ridiculous, despised." Yup. Part of an entire strategy called "Microsoft Home" that flopped badly at the time; IMHO it was also before its time, and before the hardware to support Redmond's vision existed - or was commercially viable...
3) 1997 - Clippy aka "Office Assistant" - probably the most ridiculed tech product in history.
5) 2002 - Mira Smart Display - personally, had never even heard of this one...
6) 2003 - Windows Mobile - I was invited to and attended the Silicon Valley launch in San Jose. Looked exciting, the launch certainly was... But it was deathly, deathly slow... Quickly crushed by a slew of more advanced and better designed operating systems from RIM and Apple (and later also Android from Google). Killed in 2010.
7) 2006 - Zune. Brought out their own MP3 player only about eight years after the RIO MP300 (a device I had bought at Fry's, used for a couple of weeks and foolishly returned. With only about 60 minutes worth of music it wasn't practical - but I wouldn't mind owning it for history's sake...). For a history of MP3 devices check out Wikipedia - actually harks back to 1981!!
8) 2007 -Windows Vista....yikes....
Of course there was also Win95, Win NT...and if we dig deep we'll be sure to find a handful of additional flops.
Microsoft will soon be celebrating four decades of tech leadership, believe it or not.
Just goes to show you that to create a legacy of success - you have to try and try and try, and inevitably you will fail. Many times over, if you try hard enough. The important thing is to know to pick up the pieces, learn your lessons, and keep ploughing forward.
Comments? Hit the comment button below, or, better yet - join the conversation on the Linkedin Anatomy of Failure group.
http://bit.ly/Anatomy_of_Failure
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
A Collection of Quotes on Failure and Success
"A Quote-a-day keeps failure away..." :-)
Erik A. Steiner, Innovator and Entrepreneur
Oct 23, 2013
"Failure isn't fatal, but failure to change might be."
John Wooden, American Basketball player and coach
Oct 22, 2013
"Success is never permanent, and failure is never final."
Mike Ditka, former American football NFL player, television commentator, and coach
Oct 21, 2013
"Make failure your teacher, not your undertaker."
Zig Ziglar, Motivational Speaker
Oct 20, 2013
"Failure is a detour not a dead end street."
Zig Ziglar, Motivational Speaker
Oct 19, 2013
"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
Pablo Picasso, Artist
Oct 16, 2013
"Failure is the price of excellence."
Leonard Pitts, Jr., Pulitzer prize winning commentator
Oct 12, 2013
"We learn from failure, not from success!"
Bram Stoker, Author (Dracula!)
Oct 11, 2013
"When I was young, I observed that nine out of 10 things I did were failures, so I did 10 times more work."
George Bernard Shaw, Playwright
Oct 10, 2013
"Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at something that doesn't really matter.”
Dwight L Moody, Evangelist
Oct 9, 2013
"I thrive on failure. I thrive on things that are not perfect. It sends me back into the ring to get it right.”
Tom Ford, Designer
September 8th 2013
"Persistence can change #failure into extraordinary achievement."
Matt Biondi, Olympic Athlete, Swimmer
Dec 19, 2012
"Many people dream of success. To me succes can only be achieved through repeated failure and introspection. In fact, success represents the one percent of your work that results from the ninety-nine percent that is called failure."
Soichiro Honda, Engineer, Founder of Honda Motor Company (aka "Honda")
As quoted in The Power of Failure: 27 Ways to Turn Life's Setbacks into Success
Dec 15, 2012
"Failure is the foundation of success, and the means by which it is achieved."
Lao Tzu, Philosopher
As quoted in The Power of Failure: 27 Ways to Turn Life's Setbacks into Success
Dec 14, 2012
"The Achilles heel of failure: hindsight is 20/20."
Erik A. Steiner, Innovator and Entrepreneur
Dec 13, 2012
This time, a poem... IF by Rudyard Kipling
IF
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!
Rudyard Kipling, short-story writer, poet, novelist
Dec 12, 2012
"Only he who does nothing makes no mistakes."
French Proverb
As quoted in The Power of Failure: 27 Ways to Turn Life's Setbacks into Success
Dec 9, 2012
"He that is overcautious will accomplish little."
Friedrich von Schiller, Poet, Philosopher, Historian and Playwright
As quoted in The Ten Commandments for Business Failure
Dec 8, 2012
"For this is the tragedy of man-circumstances change, but he doesn't."
Machiavelli, Historian, Politician, Diplomat, Philosopher, Humanist and Writer
As quoted in The Ten Commandments for Business Failure
Dec 2, 2012
"In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure."
Bill Cosby, Comedian
Dec 1, 2012
Referring to every well-educated person, Charles Kettering, one of America's greatest inventors and innovators of all time, said, "...it is not a disgrace to fail, and that he must analyze each failure to find its cause...must learn how to fail intelligently. Failing is one of the greatest arts in the world. One fails towards success."
Charles Kettering, Inventor
Quoted in Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins
Nov 12, 2012
"Being successful is kind of dull."
Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari
Quoted in Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins
Nolan Bushnell
Nov 11, 2012
Tom Crouch writing about the Wright Brothers...
"They were as excited about failure as they were by success."
(from The Bishop's Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright)
The Wright Brothers
Tom Crouch
Nov 10, 2012
"One must be God to be able to distinguish successes from failures and not make mistakes."
Anton Chekov
Nov 9, 2012
"Good men are still liable to make mistakes, and are sometimes warmly engaged in errors, which they take for divine truths, shining in their minds with the clearest light."
John Locke
Oct 29, 2012
"If there is a single tragic flaw that mars our biggest enterprises, it is conservatism - the failure to fail, and fail big, in an era of unprecedented volatility and ambiguity."
Tom Peters Oct 17, 2012
"Failure in Innovation - it's a price worth paying."
Tim Harford (from: Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure
. New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2011)
Oct 15, 2012
Man has been writing of failure since biblical times. Here we go back to the time of Aristotle, to a controversial quote that I do not believe does justice to reality:
"It is possible to fail in many ways...while to succeed is possible only in one way."
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, II, 6
Oct 14, 2012
"I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest."
John Keats, one of the greatest and most important poets in the history of mankind - born in 1795, he died so so young, only 26. One hesitates to think what Keats would have accomplished in a full lifetime...the following are ruminations from a letter written to one James Hessey on October 8, 1818:
"The Genius of Poetry must work out its own salvation in a man: It cannot be matured by law & precept, but by sensation ad watchfulness in itself - That which is creative must create itself - In Endymion, I leaped headlong into the Sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the Soundings, the quicksands, & the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea & comfortable advice. I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest."
John Keats
Oct 13, 2012
Mark Zbaracki, at the time a professor at NYU, wrote a nice little piece titled "Success, Failure and the Race of Truth" for the Journal of Management Inquiry back in September of 2006. Thought I'd pull a nice quote from there:
"...those moments when life sends us sliding along the pavement or tumbling over the handlebars are gifts, opportunities for clarity..."
Mark J. Zbaracki
Oct 12, 2012
Here's John Adams writing on failure in 1755 (!):
(I received this newest volume from the Library of America today - the man was only twenty years old when he inferred and wrote the following and much more. Incredible. The strange spelling, capitalizations etc. as in the original text)
"If we look into History we shall find some nations rising from contemptible beginnings, and spreading their influence, 'till the whole Globe is subjected to their sway. When they have reach'd the summit of Grandeur, some minute and unsuspected Cause commonly affects their Ruin, and the Empire of the world is transferr'd to some other place. Immortal Rome was at first but an insignificant Village, inhabited only be a few abandoned Ruffins, but by degrees it rose to a stupendous Height, and excell'd in Arts and Arms all the nations that praeceeded it. But the demolition of Carthage (what one should think would have establish'd it in supream dominion) by removing all danger, suffer'd to sink into debauchery, and made it att length an easy prey to Barbarians."
John Adams, Revolutionary Writings, 1755-1775
"There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life."
T H Huxley, On Medical Education (1870)
Oct 10, 2012
"83 percent of Chief Executive Officers fail."
Lucy Kellaway, writing for the Financial Times Oct 9, 2012
"Failure is good. It's fertilizer. Everything I've learned about coaching I've learned from making mistakes."
Rick Pitino, NBA Coach
Oct 8, 2012 - Today I've decided to start up a compendium of my favorite quotes on failure - I'll be making a valiant attempt to post one-a-day (A quote a day keeps the failure away?? :-)
Here's the first one for you all - from the creator of Peter Pan no less:
"We are all failures - at least, all the best of us are."
J. M. Barrie
Just came across this on Gotham so here's another one for today:
“Ever tried.
Ever failed.
No matter.
Try again.
Fail again.
Fail better."
Samuel Beckett
Erik A. Steiner, Innovator and Entrepreneur
Oct 23, 2013
"Failure isn't fatal, but failure to change might be."
John Wooden, American Basketball player and coach
Oct 22, 2013
"Success is never permanent, and failure is never final."
Mike Ditka, former American football NFL player, television commentator, and coach
"Make failure your teacher, not your undertaker."
Zig Ziglar, Motivational Speaker
Oct 20, 2013
"Failure is a detour not a dead end street."
Zig Ziglar, Motivational Speaker
"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
Pablo Picasso, Artist
Oct 16, 2013
"Failure is the price of excellence."
Leonard Pitts, Jr., Pulitzer prize winning commentator
Oct 12, 2013
"We learn from failure, not from success!"
Bram Stoker, Author (Dracula!)
Oct 11, 2013
"When I was young, I observed that nine out of 10 things I did were failures, so I did 10 times more work."
George Bernard Shaw, Playwright
Oct 10, 2013
"Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at something that doesn't really matter.”
Dwight L Moody, Evangelist
Oct 9, 2013
"I thrive on failure. I thrive on things that are not perfect. It sends me back into the ring to get it right.”
Tom Ford, Designer
September 8th 2013
"Persistence can change #failure into extraordinary achievement."
Matt Biondi, Olympic Athlete, Swimmer
Dec 19, 2012
"Many people dream of success. To me succes can only be achieved through repeated failure and introspection. In fact, success represents the one percent of your work that results from the ninety-nine percent that is called failure."
Soichiro Honda, Engineer, Founder of Honda Motor Company (aka "Honda")
As quoted in The Power of Failure: 27 Ways to Turn Life's Setbacks into Success
Dec 15, 2012
"Failure is the foundation of success, and the means by which it is achieved."
Lao Tzu, Philosopher
As quoted in The Power of Failure: 27 Ways to Turn Life's Setbacks into Success
Dec 14, 2012
"The Achilles heel of failure: hindsight is 20/20."
Erik A. Steiner, Innovator and Entrepreneur
Dec 13, 2012
This time, a poem... IF by Rudyard Kipling
IF
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!
Rudyard Kipling, short-story writer, poet, novelist
Dec 12, 2012
"Only he who does nothing makes no mistakes."
French Proverb
As quoted in The Power of Failure: 27 Ways to Turn Life's Setbacks into Success
Dec 9, 2012
"He that is overcautious will accomplish little."
Friedrich von Schiller, Poet, Philosopher, Historian and Playwright
As quoted in The Ten Commandments for Business Failure
Dec 8, 2012
"For this is the tragedy of man-circumstances change, but he doesn't."
Machiavelli, Historian, Politician, Diplomat, Philosopher, Humanist and Writer
As quoted in The Ten Commandments for Business Failure
Dec 2, 2012
"In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure."
Bill Cosby, Comedian
Dec 1, 2012
Referring to every well-educated person, Charles Kettering, one of America's greatest inventors and innovators of all time, said, "...it is not a disgrace to fail, and that he must analyze each failure to find its cause...must learn how to fail intelligently. Failing is one of the greatest arts in the world. One fails towards success."
Charles Kettering, Inventor
Quoted in Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins
Nov 12, 2012
"Being successful is kind of dull."
Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari
Quoted in Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins
Nolan Bushnell
Nov 11, 2012
Tom Crouch writing about the Wright Brothers...
"They were as excited about failure as they were by success."
(from The Bishop's Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright
)The Wright Brothers
Tom Crouch
Nov 10, 2012
"One must be God to be able to distinguish successes from failures and not make mistakes."
Anton Chekov
Nov 9, 2012
"Good men are still liable to make mistakes, and are sometimes warmly engaged in errors, which they take for divine truths, shining in their minds with the clearest light."
John Locke
Oct 29, 2012
"If there is a single tragic flaw that mars our biggest enterprises, it is conservatism - the failure to fail, and fail big, in an era of unprecedented volatility and ambiguity."
Tom Peters Oct 17, 2012
"Failure in Innovation - it's a price worth paying."
Tim Harford (from: Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure
. New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2011)
Oct 15, 2012
Man has been writing of failure since biblical times. Here we go back to the time of Aristotle, to a controversial quote that I do not believe does justice to reality:
"It is possible to fail in many ways...while to succeed is possible only in one way."
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, II, 6
Oct 14, 2012
"I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest."
John Keats, one of the greatest and most important poets in the history of mankind - born in 1795, he died so so young, only 26. One hesitates to think what Keats would have accomplished in a full lifetime...the following are ruminations from a letter written to one James Hessey on October 8, 1818:
"The Genius of Poetry must work out its own salvation in a man: It cannot be matured by law & precept, but by sensation ad watchfulness in itself - That which is creative must create itself - In Endymion, I leaped headlong into the Sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the Soundings, the quicksands, & the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea & comfortable advice. I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest."
John Keats
Oct 13, 2012
Mark Zbaracki, at the time a professor at NYU, wrote a nice little piece titled "Success, Failure and the Race of Truth" for the Journal of Management Inquiry back in September of 2006. Thought I'd pull a nice quote from there:
"...those moments when life sends us sliding along the pavement or tumbling over the handlebars are gifts, opportunities for clarity..."
Mark J. Zbaracki
Oct 12, 2012
Here's John Adams writing on failure in 1755 (!):
(I received this newest volume from the Library of America today - the man was only twenty years old when he inferred and wrote the following and much more. Incredible. The strange spelling, capitalizations etc. as in the original text)
"If we look into History we shall find some nations rising from contemptible beginnings, and spreading their influence, 'till the whole Globe is subjected to their sway. When they have reach'd the summit of Grandeur, some minute and unsuspected Cause commonly affects their Ruin, and the Empire of the world is transferr'd to some other place. Immortal Rome was at first but an insignificant Village, inhabited only be a few abandoned Ruffins, but by degrees it rose to a stupendous Height, and excell'd in Arts and Arms all the nations that praeceeded it. But the demolition of Carthage (what one should think would have establish'd it in supream dominion) by removing all danger, suffer'd to sink into debauchery, and made it att length an easy prey to Barbarians."
John Adams, Revolutionary Writings, 1755-1775
"There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early in life."
T H Huxley, On Medical Education (1870)
Oct 10, 2012
"83 percent of Chief Executive Officers fail."
Lucy Kellaway, writing for the Financial Times Oct 9, 2012
"Failure is good. It's fertilizer. Everything I've learned about coaching I've learned from making mistakes."
Rick Pitino, NBA Coach
Oct 8, 2012 - Today I've decided to start up a compendium of my favorite quotes on failure - I'll be making a valiant attempt to post one-a-day (A quote a day keeps the failure away?? :-)
Here's the first one for you all - from the creator of Peter Pan no less:
"We are all failures - at least, all the best of us are."
J. M. Barrie
Just came across this on Gotham so here's another one for today:
“Ever tried.
Ever failed.
No matter.
Try again.
Fail again.
Fail better."
Samuel Beckett
Monday, December 3, 2012
Another Version of The Worst Business Failures in History
Here is yet another version of the worst business failures in history - always interesting to read, always a lot to learn!
25 Worst Business Failures
Sunday, December 2, 2012
In an excellent NYT article from January 2011 Jay Goltz lays out his top 10 reasons for small business failure.
The short list (for the even shorter list just follow through the underlined phrases...):
Business is mathematically challenged - i.e. insufficient demand, too much competition.
Owners do not step down when time comes.
Sometimes less is more.
Poor accounting.
Cash flow (btw #1 reason businesses fail overall...).
Operational mediocrity.
Operational inefficiency.
Dysfunctional management.
Lack of succession plan.
Declining market.
For a deeper analysis, head over to Goltz's excellent article + bonus insightful comments from his readers.
The short list (for the even shorter list just follow through the underlined phrases...):
For a deeper analysis, head over to Goltz's excellent article + bonus insightful comments from his readers.
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Business Failure and Why its Crucial to Success
"The beauty of epic failures...
They're painful.
They're humiliating.
And sometimes they're exactly what you need."
...thus starts a March 2012 article in Inc. magazine.
Worth a read.
The beauty of epic failures.
They're painful.
They're humiliating.
And sometimes they're exactly what you need."
...thus starts a March 2012 article in Inc. magazine.
Worth a read.
The beauty of epic failures.
Monday, November 12, 2012
From WSJ - A Trial of Failure
Blogging for WSJ, Osterwalder, author of Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers
, pens A Trial of Failure
, pens A Trial of Failure
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Friday, November 9, 2012
15 Lessons from the Greatest Business Failures of All Time
Max Nisen writes about the fifteen lessons one can learn from the greatest business failures of all time on the Business Insider war room.
James Dyson on leveraging failure to reach success
James Dyson talks to Entrepreneur about leveraging failure for success - click here
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