What is failure?

 

Most non-entrepreneurs might define it negatively as anything that did not work out, that lost money and that caused great embarrassment and loss. To the entrepreneur though, failure may be any of the following positive experiences: a prerequisite to success, a chance for discovery, a profound teacher, a future value-adder, a provider of new direction, an enhanced motivator, a path to achievement and even as a relieving liberator.

 

Many past and current successful entrepreneur argue that failure was actually a prerequisite to their success. Instead of avoiding failure at all costs, of being paralysed by the fear of the unknown and insulating their self-esteem from attack they rather accommodated failure and understood its value in entrepreneurial life. As T.J.Watson, the founder of IBM, stated - to be successful you must double your failure rate.

 

For more on this topic - see my article Redefining Failure - an Entrepreneurial Perspective.