Learning from business failure

What do Walt Disney, Bill Gates and Abraham Lincoln have in common? They all failed in their first business venture but they didn’t let that stop them.

It’s amazing how we regard failures as bad. When a business or project fails, it’s condemned for being a flop. That’s where we get the word “loser”, one of the most disgusting terms of the modern age! Failure doesn’t make you a loser. But try telling that to people.

Amazing too when you consider the different figures about your chances of succeeding in business. According to some estimates, two out of three small business will fail in the first year although I have seen other figures that have it at around 7.5 per cent. Still, if 8 out of 100 new businesses shut their doors every year over many years, there’s a big cumulative effect.

It not only applies to running a business. There are plenty of failed projects in the workplace too, which makes it relevant for employees too.

That’s what makes this piece from BusinessWeek, Starting Over When Your Business Fails so interesting. It talks about developing the ability in people to sit down and work out exactly what caused the stuff-up and ensure they don’t repeat the same mistake. Check the slide show too.

Also worth checking out is this other piece from BusinessWeek, How Failure Breeds Success. It gives examples of how some companies go about learning from flops.

Like at waterproof fabric maker W.L.Gore & Associates where managers behind flops are thanked, given trophies and then told write up what they learned from the experience.

So how many flops have you had? What have you learned from them? And do we put too much focus on success instead of learning from failure?