Why failure drives success

Since you were young, people have always told you if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Perhaps this is just to stop you from giving up when you face hurdles in life or maybe there is scientific evidence to prove that continuous failure does in fact, drive success.

Having studied the effects of successive failure, head of strategy and value at Mu Sigma, Tom Pohlmann proved that failing hard and fast can actually be positive for the individual. 

The research shows that failing fast and often is the the key to success in many areas of business.

Mr Pohlmann said: “The rapid change of pace in business puts companies under pressure to innovate constantly, new technologies are making it possible to meet this challenge through on-going experimentation.”

The report indicates that in order to develop any successful product you must experiment to get the desired end result, learning from the many failures.

“Failing isn’t bad for business. It just leads to something else happening, which, if carried out correctly builds upon that failure,” Mr Pohlmann adds.

Even tech-giant Apple had its fair share of failures like The Newton, its early hand-held computer which was soon killed off in favour of the more successful products that most of us now treasure dearly.

Instead of seeing failure as a sign of weakness, businesses should see it as a inevitable speed bump on the long road to success.

Of course, constantly refining an idea is nothing new. Every design from the steam train to the domestic cooker has gone through several alterations.

Director of research at NESTA, Stitian Westlake said: “Any innovation has involved risk. There’s always a danger in trying something out that it won’t work”

For Pohlmann, innovation is often like throwing darts at a moving dartboard, you can either try to throw darts more accurately, or you have to throw more of them to increase the probability of hitting the bull’s eye.