To learn, Survive

Make each failure useful. Don’t be misled - some failures are truly a waste of time and the only way to salvage any benefit is the personal growth of surviving it.

No failure is pretty at the time. Innovating is an ugly business. The first key to a beautiful failure is surviving. It takes grit and resilience to take a pounding and get back up, ready to fight again.

Remember that staying on the ground makes defeat certain. Staying on your feet gives you a shot at changing the narrative .

Make failure cheap

To ensure you can survive long enough to find success, make failure as cheap as possible.

When British industrialist Henry Kremer offered a £50,000 prize fund to accelerate innovation in human-powered flight, many inventors, engineers and entrepreneurs threw their hat in the ring. It was 1959. 50 years had already passed since the historic Wright brothers flight.

Kremer’s challenge was to fly a figure eight around two markers a half-mile apart. Despite the princely reward on offer (over $1m today), the next 17 years were marked with failure.