the failure imperative

To succeed, we need to risk failure

Reading an Inc Magazine profile of TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington, one of the quotes that leapt out of the story was Arrington’s view on entrepreneurs and failure;

Our main competitive advantage is that my team and I truly love entrepreneurs. They’re my rock stars. I’ve always been fascinated by entrepreneurs. I had four businesses that did not work out. TechCrunch is my first real success, and it happened by accident. If I were to write a book, it would be about what drives entrepreneurs. I meet the winners, and the losers, too. Most of them could go out and get a perfectly reasonable job as an accountant or a lawyer. Instead, they risk everything for almost certain failure. The losers are actually more interesting sometimes. You learn a ton from failure.

“You learn a ton from failure”

We have a habit of celebrating the winners and ignoring the ventures that didn’t work out, if we don’t outright scorn them.

The thing is we learn from the failures — the misjudgements, bad luck and downright stupid ideas that we all have when running a business teach us about ourselves, our partners and the world around us.

We need to be valuing those lessons as they prepare us for when we do have a success.

The world is becoming increasingly risk adverse and the paradox there is that by avoiding failure, we ultimately reduce our chances of success.

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Author: Paul Wallbank

Paul Wallbank is a speaker and writer charting how technology is changing society and business. Paul has four regular technology advice radio programs on ABC, a weekly column on the smartcompany.com.au website and has published seven books.

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