Chances are, if you've been in business for any period of time, you've made a mistake. In fact, if you're an entrepreneur, making mistakes is part of your DNA, since entrepreneurs are invariably risk takers, and those that take risks make mistakes (see BusinessWeek.com, 7/10/06, "How Failure Breeds Success").
The key is to learn from those mistakes. Success is success, but it's rarely, if ever, achieved without failure along the way. After all, if it weren't for a few mistakes, those famous bicycle builders from Dayton, Ohio—Wilbur and Orville Wright—would never have flown for 12 seconds, 120 feet above in Kitty Hawk, N.C. And then where would modern aviation be?
Or take Thomas Edison. During the 1870s, the inventor of the phonograph and the light bulb encountered a number of misses en route to his legacy of enduring innovations. He picked the wrong business partners and invested in great concepts that unfortunately had no market. But he also learned valuable lessons from those mishaps, such as the importance of doing market research and the need to consider the economic factors of his inventions.
IMPORTANT FOUNDATION. Microsoft (MSFT) founder Bill Gates, who's responsible for what he has called some "expensive mistakes," once said: "In the corporate world, when someone makes a mistake, everyone runs for cover. At Microsoft, I try to put an end to that kind of thinking. It's fine to celebrate success, but it's more important to heed the lessons of failure. How a company deals with mistakes suggests how well it will bring out the best ideas and talents of its people, and how effectively it will respond to change."
While B-schools often make case studies of notable successes, it's the mistakes that test the mettle of any business. And any success is built on a foundation of mistakes, because mistakes are often challenges that force entrepreneurs to grow, compete, and to find new solutions on the way to ultimately achieving their goals.
To see a slide show on entrepreneurs' favorite business mistakes and how they dealt with them, click here.
Perman is a staff writer for BusinessWeek.com in New York
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