Fail fast, succeed later is a myth – The Wall Street Journal

Part of the folklore about successful entrepreneurs is that they succeeded because they first failed. “Fail fast,” entrepreneurs are often told, and you’ll learn valuable lessons that will help you in your next venture.

Published on:

03 Dec 2019, 2:27 pm

There is a general perception that you do not learn if you do not fail and that you learn from your mistakes. The Afrikaans idiom, "'n Donkie stamp nie sy kop twee keer teen dieselfde klip nie" is probably the best way to describe this perception. In the business world, we often look for examples of people who have first failed and then soared to success and wealth. A new failure cult has developed around Amazon's Jeff Bezos who says he is a fan of failure as he believes his failed experiments are necessary to create successful ventures. Bezos calls inventions and failure "inseparable twins" and judging from the fact that his net worth runs into serious billions; you would think he has the recipe. South African born Elon Musk is another example of a somebody who has failed at times with SpaceX launches and he has been fired a couple of times as CEO but manages to persevere and is undeniably, overall a major success. But are the Elon Musks and Jeff Bezos's of this world, the norm? Francis Greene from Edinburgh University's Business School writes in the Wall Street Journal that research has shown that believing in the idea of "Fail Fast, succeed later" that entrepreneurs are often told is a path to success, is a myth and entrepreneurs don't always learn from their mistakes. – Linda van Tilburg