There are lots of great quotes from famous people telling us how they learned from their mistakes. The following are some famous Thomas Edison quotes:
Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.
Many of life’s failures are people who didn’t realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
I have not failed. I just found 10,000 ways that don’t work.
If one of the world’s most famous inventors can laugh at his mistakes and move on, we should all be able to do the same. A recent article in Business Week titled “How Failure Breeds Success” talks about many of the well-known mistakes big companies have made. For example, the article talks about Coca Cola’s mistakes when it introduced the “New Coca-Cola.”
After the failure with New Coke, the CEO publicly admitted that his company made a big mistake. However, he said, “you will see some failure… As we take more risks, this is something we have to accept as part of the regeneration process.” The CEO knew that Coca Cola had to take greater risks and tolerate failure to inevitably lead to growth and greater success.
Stefan G. Thomke, a professor at Harvard Business School and author of Experimentation Matters, states: “Failure is not a bad thing… (Failure) is very important to the experimental process.” Business Week, July 10, 2006, p. 44. The Business Week article goes on to say that innovation requires organizations to explore, experiment and make mistakes. Smart failures should be encouraged as part of the success process.
What does all this mean for the small business or entrepreneur? We can learn from large companies that risk is an important part of the growth process. We can learn to encourage our employees to “think outside the box” and not fear retaliation if they make mistakes. We must learn not to be risk averse and to accept mistakes as part of the growth process.
We must also learn to listen to our employees, our customers, and our suppliers, because they can give us a different perspective that can lead to new and profitable ideas. We should learn to ask these people questions and let them work with prototypes before our new projects go too far. Finally, we can look back at past failures to see if they shed any new information about our current operations.
Jo Ann Joy, Bachelor of Business Administration, Executive Director
The future of your business starts here!
Jo Ann can be reached by phone at (602) 663-7007, by fax at (602) 324-7582, by email at joannjoy@Indigo Business Solutions.net, and by mail to 2313 East Ocotillo Rd., Phoenix, AZ 85016. I have many articles published and will send them to you free of charge. Most consultations are free.