Yes, it’s OK it took me 5,127 attempts to make a bagless vacuum

A reporter asked him - ‘Mr. Edison, is it true that you failed in your first 1,000 attempts to invent the light bulb? ‘Young man, I did not fail 1,000 times. I have discovered and documented 1,000 ways on how-not-to-make-a-light bulb! I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.’ Many years later, when James

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One area where I think we are especially distinctive is failure. I believe we are the best place in the world to fail (we have plenty of practice!), and failure and invention are inseparable twins. To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment. Most large organizations embrace the idea ... See more

So much failure seems remarkable, but it’s not. It’s actually typical because quality almost always comes from quantity. The more you make, the more likely you are to make something great. So expect most of your ideas to dead end and most of your drafts to be unusable. Expect to make plenty of garbage along the way. Expect this—and embrace it—becau

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Traditional schooling trains people to think incorrectly about failure. You’re taught a subject, you take a test, and if you fail, that’s it. You’re done. But once you’re out of school, there is no book, no test, no grade. And if you fail, you learn. In fact, in most cases, it’s the only way to learn—especially if you’re creating something the worl... See more

When you start off, you have to deal with the problems of failure. You need to be thickskinned, to learn that not every project will survive.

People do stupid things when they have a giant budget—they overdesign, they overthink. That inevitably leads to longer runways, longer schedules, and slower heartbeats. Much, much slower. Generally any brand-new product should never take longer than 18 months to ship—24 at the limit. The sweet spot is somewhere between 9 and 18 months. That applies... See more