The Awesome Power of Failure

If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative — Woody Allen

“Experience is what you get when you are looking for something else” I read that quote by Mark Twain on the back of a matchbox when I was a child. I quoted it widely whenever anyone told me what a great experience it was to play in a big golf tournament, even if you played like a dog. In a nutshell, gaining experience is often very disappointing.

Many of the entrepreneurial giants of history have had to experience the ignominy of failure many times over. The difference is how these great people viewed their failures. Many refused to look upon them as failures at all. Rather, they considered them, as did Edison in his thousands of unsuccessful attempts to design a light bulb, as successfully demonstrating how not to accomplish a particular task. By eliminating another idea that didn’t work, the path to success became clearer. This is a classic example of positive re-framing.

Almost all business building involves a painful process of fixing problems, thus eliminating things that don’t work in the…