
The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success

Markets turn out to rely as much on morality as monetary policy; sociability can be as important as structure.
Megan McArdle • The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success
Ford wanted his customers to wait obediently at the end of his production line to hop in and drive off in whatever he chose to make. He famously remarked “You can have any color—as long as it’s black.” His company produced one car, the Model T, from 1908 to 1927, and then, when sales finally started to flag, it rolled out another car, the Model A,
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Failure is what could have happened; it’s a mistake performing without a safety net.
Megan McArdle • The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success
“Multiple iterations,” Skillman told the audience, “almost always beats single-minded focus around a single idea.” The people who were planning weren’t learning. The people who were trying and failing were.
Megan McArdle • The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success
The question they thought they were asking was “If we replace Coca-Cola with this new soda, will you buy more of it?” But the only question their test could actually answer was “Which of these small samples would you prefer to drink in a parking lot, if I gave it to you for free?”
Megan McArdle • The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success
“The reason we struggle with insecurity,” says Pastor Steven Furtick, “is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.”
Megan McArdle • The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success
The L.A. Unified School District and the Coca-Cola company were afflicted with what I call the Curse of the Successful Pilot Project. It’s what happens to organizations that forget the cardinal rule of experimentation: many results are spurious, and most pilot projects don’t scale. Most things that work great in the lab, or the taste test, or the f
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And quite often, experiments are better at telling you what doesn’t work than what does. “Experiments falsify or corroborate,” says Jim Manzi. “They don’t prove.”
Megan McArdle • The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success
It’s because, to return to our opening story, there is ultimately no way to know whether something works until you put it out there and see how your target audience reacts.