Again, Failure – Not Always a Good Thing

The idea that failure is a badge of honor will likely never go away – in the area of romance, Tennyson had a nice way of putting it – but science says it’s not always a good thing.

I wrote earlier about how failing at a startup is a turn-off to investors like my pal Mark, and to managers like me. We’d rather see how someone faced down a failure-inducing challenge and turned it around.

Some folks at MIT and Harvard agree. I think I mentioned their study before, but it has been making the rounds again, and I ran across it on my pal Caroline Waxler’s site LearnVest, which found it on Entrepreneur.com, and it looks like the whole thing was picked up by Business Insider.

This is a good thing.

A key point in these pieces is this: Don’t set out to fail. The brain learns better from success.

I can relate to this very deeply as someone who has twice now started businesses and onto a third (and maybe a fourth). Things don’t always work out (one did, one didn’t-ish). But they don’t get to success without a whole lot of faith and a sharp eye on the prize. The main startup I’m working on now has a lot of risks involved, from the customer angles to the tech and funding angles. It would be easy enough to stomach the risks with a dose of rationalization that, hey, at least it will be a learning experience.

But that would be a load of crap. You gotta set out to succeed. More importantly, frankly, you gotta succeed. The study says our brains only learn from success, not failure. And really, think about it: What’s an entrepreneur without a company under his/her belt? I hear a tree falling in a forest…

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“roadkill” image via estherase under Creative Commons license

Ireland to the World: We Are NOT Greece

For now, you’re not! Just got this defensive email today:

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Subject: Story idea: Ireland is Not Greece…

From: “xxxx” <xxxx@xxx.com>…Add to Contacts
To: “laura@recessionwire.com” <laura@recessionwire.com>

Laura,

Barry O’Leary, CEO of IDA Ireland, a government agency responsible for inward investment in Ireland, is available for an interview to discuss how Ireland is making difficult choices to improve its financial standing, and is turning out to be in much better shape than Greece and its other EU neighbors.

Barry is available to provide a look at how Ireland is faring and can speak about the future and the ongoing steps to “right the ship.”

It would be my pleasure to arrange an interview.

O’Leary (56) has worked in IDA for over 30 years in most of its business areas, including two periods totaling 15 years in Germany, latterly as Director Europe until 2002. He has been deeply involved in changing the profile and raising the value of Ireland’s inward investments in the past ten years. He has been primarily responsible, since his return to Ireland in 2002, for the successful establishment of Ireland as the leading global location outside the US for biopharmaceuticals. He has also undertaken strategic change and built new strengths in R&D, medical technologies, information and communications technologies (ICT) and other areas. He has led IDA teams that won world-class investments from companies such as Centocor, Cisco, IBM, Intel, Kellogg’s and SAP among many others. In addition to his role in the senior management of IDA, Barry O’Leary is a board member of the Dublin Molecular Medicine Centre and of the Institute of Neuroscience in Trinity College Dublin.

New Blog Host!

Just moved the blog over from Typepad to WordPress, which I have had great experiences with for Recessionwire.com. Expecting the same ultimately, though still have a bunch of sorting out to do, so it’s going to be a bit “Under Construction” for this week until the images get migrated, the post pages get un-bugged, the About copy and other features get updated, a favicon is found and added, a masthead is created (and maybe a new name chosen). Lots to do. See you soon!