Failure is a Stepping Stone to Success: Famous Examples

Failure is a Stepping Stone to Success

Famous Examples

Abraham Lincoln

Failed in business in '31.
Defeated for the legislature in '32.
Again failed in business in '34.
Sweetheart died in '35.
Had a nervous breakdown in '36.
Defeated in election in '38.
Defeated for Congress in '43.
Defeated for Congress in '46.
Defeated for Congress in '48.
Defeated for Senate in '55.
Defeated for Vice President in '56.
Defeated for Senate in '58.
Elected President in '60.

Ursula von den Leyen

Having failed as a gynecologist, Ursula von den Leyen became Federal Minister of Defence of Germany and then President of the European Commission.

Jacuzzi

The Jacuzzi brothers invented a whirlpool bath to treat people with arthritis. Although the product worked, it didn't sell well. Too few people in the target market, sufferers from arthritis, could afford the expensive bath. The Jacuzzi brothers treated that failure as a feedback, learned from it, and re-launched the same product for a different market – as a luxury item for the wealthy. It became a big success.

I have not failed 700 times. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.

Thomas Edison

In radical innovation, every step forward is a step into terra incognita where failures are teachers and opportunities are guides

Many costly Microsoft product failures provided the learning and opportunity for development of many of Microsoft's biggest successes.

Bill Gates

Microsoft

→ Many apparently wasted years working on a failed database called Omega resulted in the development of the most popular desktop database, Microsoft Access.

→ Millions of dollars and countless hours invested in a joint operating system project with IBM that was discontinued led to the operating system Windows NT.

→ A failed multiplan spreadsheet that made little headway against Lotus 1-2-3 provided learning that helped in the development of Microsoft Excel, an advanced graphic spreadsheet that leads the competition.

Charles Schwab

Charles Schwab journals their failures and lessons they've learned. They maintain also a display of failed innovations and created a videotape for employee orientation. When celebration of noble failure becomes institutionalized, people within the organization are more willing to reassess earlier decisions and take corrective measures.

Dell

"At Dell, innovation is all about taking risks and learning from failure," says Michael Dell, the Founder & CEO of Dell Inc. "Today, we're well known for inventory management, logistics, supply chain management, and such, but that wasn't always the case."

"Once, we had a very large disaster – large, at least, for the small company we were at the time. The personal computer industry was making the transition to a new type of memory chip, and we found ourselves stuck with far too many of the old kind. That was a costly mistake, and it took us about a year to recover, but we learned from it. The failure led us to develop a new way to manage inventory far better."

Success is 99% failure.

Soichiro Honda

You don't learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.

Richard Branson

Good companies embrace a culture of mini-failures. Setbacks aren’t problems, they’re opportunities.

Tom Kelley

IDEO

Failure is a friend of homo thinking
and an enemy of a homo emotional.

Failure is a stepping stone to success ▪ Turn failures to opportunities