Failure is an Option

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." — Thomas Edison

Some years back I spoke with a client of one of the big-name consulting firms about a project that had impacted the client's core technology platforms. Of course the client raved about how the consultants had improved the system's performance. A few months later, those very systems went into a messy global meltdown that impacted the client's retail and institutional customers in some big (and litigious) ways.

Cue Samuel West. A Californian transplant to Sweden, Samuel opened the Museum of Failure in his adopted home city of Helsingborg, Sweden. The museum highlights such notable product failures as the Apple Newton, pens designed for females, a mask with electrodes that was supposed to beautify your skin, and Blak—a Coca Cola product that mixed Coca Cola with coffee.