
of not meeting a desirable or intended objective, and may be viewed as the opposite of success. Product failure ranges from failure to sell the product to fracture
of the product, in the worst cases leading to personal injury, the province of forensic engineering
.
Thomas J. Watson
is attributed with saying "If you want to succeed, double your failure rate". Wired Magazine
editor Kevin Kelly likewise explains that a great deal can be learned from things going unexpectedly, and that part of science's success comes from keeping blunders "small, manageable, constant, and trackable".
It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.
Failure is not an option.
In the lexicon of youth, which fate reserves For a bright manhood, there is no such word As – fail.
Half the failures in life arise from pulling in one's horse as he is leaping.
I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.
Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure.
If at first you don't succeed, cheat, repeat until caught, and then lie!

of not meeting a desirable or intended objective, and may be viewed as the opposite of success. Product failure ranges from failure to sell the product to fracture
of the product, in the worst cases leading to personal injury, the province of forensic engineering
.
Failure in science
Thomas J. Watsonis attributed with saying "If you want to succeed, double your failure rate". Wired Magazine
editor Kevin Kelly likewise explains that a great deal can be learned from things going unexpectedly, and that part of science's success comes from keeping blunders "small, manageable, constant, and trackable". He uses the example of engineers and programmers who push systems to their limits, breaking them to learn about them. Kelly also warns against creating a culture (e.g. school system) that punishes failure harshly, because this inhibits a creative process, and risks teaching people not to communicate important failures with others (e.g. Null results).
Criteria for failure
The criteria for failure are heavily dependent on context of use, and may be relativeto a particular observer
or belief system
. A situation considered to be a failure by one might be considered a success by another, particularly in cases of direct competition
or a zero-sum game. Similarly, the degree of success or failure in a situation may be differently viewed by distinct observers or participants, such that a situation that one considers to be a failure, another might consider to be a success, a qualified success or a neutral situation.
It may also be difficult or impossible to ascertain whether a situation meets criteria for failure or success due to ambiguous or ill-defined definition of those criteria. Finding useful and effective criteria, or heuristic
s, to judge the success or failure of a situation may itself be a significant task.
Types of failure
Failure can be differentially perceived from the viewpoints of the evaluators. A person who is only interested in the final outcome of an activity would consider it to be an Outcome Failure if the core issue has not been resolved or a core need is not met. A failure can also be a process failure whereby although the activity is completed successfully, a person may still feel dissatisfied if the underlying process is perceived to be below expected standard or benchmark.- Failure to anticipatePredictionA prediction or forecast is a statement about the way things will happen in the future, often but not always based on experience or knowledge...
- Failure to perceivePerceptionPerception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...
- Failure to carry out a task
Loser is a derogatory term for a person who is (according to the standards of the observer) generally unsuccessful.
Commercial failures
A commercial failure is a productthat does not reach expectations of success.
Most of the items listed below had high expectations, significant financial investments, and/or widespread publicity, but fell far short of success. Due to the subjective nature of "success" and "meeting expectations," there can be disagreement about what constitutes a "major flop."
- For flops in computer and video gaming, see List of commercial failures in computer and video gaming
- For company failures related to the 1997–2001 Dot-com bubbleDot-com bubbleThe dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...
, see Dot-com companyDot-com companyA dot-com company, or simply a dot-com , is a company that does most of its business on the Internet, usually through a website that uses the popular top-level domain, ".com" .While the term can refer to present-day companies, it is also used specifically to refer to companies with... - See also VaporwareVaporwareVaporware is a term in the computer industry that describes a product, typically computer hardware or software, that is announced to the general public but is never actually released nor officially canceled. Vaporware is also a term sometimes used to describe events that are announced or predicted,...
- Box-office bomb
Internet memes

where users superimpose a caption, often the word "fail" or "epic fail", onto photos or short videos depicting unsuccessful events or people falling short of expectations. In July 2003, a contributor to Urban Dictionary
wrote that the term, "fail," could be used as an interjection, "when one disapproves of something," citing the example: "You actually bought that? FAIL." This most likely originated as a shortened form of "You fail" or, more fully, "You fail it," the taunting "game over" message in the 1998 Japanese video game Blazing Star
, notorious for its fractured English
. There is an entire Internet site dedicated to "fails" called Fail Blog
. The #fail hash tag is used on the microblogging site Twitter
to indicate contempt or displeasure, and the image that accompanies the message that the site is overloaded is referred to as the "fail whale".
Failboat or consignment of fail is a popular macro series, featuring images of cargo vessels tipping over or shedding cargo, with captions such as 'the failboat has arrived', or 'all aboard the failboat'. The original vessel whose image was used was the MV Cougar Ace, although the Ital Florida, the MV Napoli and even the SS Normandy, sunk at her berth in New York harbour, have appeared.
The term "miserable failure" has also been popularized as a result of a widely known "Google bomb
ing," which caused Google search
es for the term to turn up the White House biography of George W. Bush
.
See also
Further reading
- Perrow, CharlesCharles PerrowCharles B. Perrow is an emeritus professor of sociology at Yale University and visiting professor at Stanford University. He is the author of several books and many articles on organizations, and is primarily concerned with the impact of large organizations on society.-Academic appointments:After...
. Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies. New York: Basic Books, 1983. Paperback reprint, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University PressPrinceton University Press-Further reading:* "". Artforum International, 2005.-External links:* * * * *...
, 1999. ISBN 0-691-00412-9 - Sandage, Scott A.Scott SandageScott A. Sandage is a cultural historian at Carnegie Mellon University. He is best known as the author of Born Losers: A History of Failure in America, which was selected as an "Editor's Choice" book by Atlantic Monthly, and was awarded the 34th Annual Thomas J. Wilson Prize, for the best "first...
Born Losers: A History of Failure in America. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University PressHarvard University PressHarvard University Press is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. In 2005, it published 220 new titles. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Its current director is William P...
, 2005. ISBN 0-674-01510-X, ISBN 0-674-02107-X