Hello everyone! We are just about wrapping up the semester. But before we go, I just wanted to share my thoughts about failure and why is it (in most cases) a good thing. I just have a few takeaways that I would like to share and hope it would be of help to many of you reading this.

Most of the entrepreneurs or new startups are always afraid of one thing; Failing. They are afraid of investing too much time, effort and money in a venture or idea but end up failing and losing everything. But what many do not understand is that failing early in a venture or being unsuccessful is not the end of the road, but it could be a start of something better. Failure does not mean you wrap it up and do some mediocre because you are not good enough but it is simply a learning step in a long road ahead for success. Some points from my perspective about failure I would like to share are below:

• The most important thing to understand is that failure is a learning experience. There is a very famous quote from Thomas Edison ” I have not failed, I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”. This quote to me summarizes failure. Think of it is an experience so you know what to do better the next time you try again.
• Another thing is to not put all your investment and effort in an idea right away. You should always test the water first. That is why there are concepts like prototyping or soft launching. You need to see if the idea will get the same response as you are expecting before diving right in. This move will reduce the risk.
• It does not matter if you enter the market first or if you have created a product that does not exist yet. Its all about executing it perfectly for it to be successful.
• If you have received a not so positive response, do not let your pride or ego let you pursue it for a longer time. It is better to scrap the idea before risking big and come up with something new.
• The market does not care about anyone. They only care about what suits them in terms of price and functionality of the product. In order to reduce the risk of failure, we need to focus on the failure by following the guidelines of design thinking so we have a better understanding of what the audience needs.

I would like to leave a quote from one of my old bosses and this quote has always remained stuck in my head because it is very inspirational. It goes “It is always better to take a wrong decision early than a right decision too late”.