Posts Tagged As Failure

We All Fail but Are We Failures? Successful Presidential Speechwriter Jon Lovett Turned Failed NBC Television Writer Still Delivers Kick Ass Commencement Address

One of the things I hate most about our sensationalist news media is how quick we are to label someone as a failure after they have failed.  One of the topics that I focus on with my consulting practice is that being innovative requires failing frequently but that doesn’t equate to being a “Failure.”  This is true in the arts as well as in business.  Perhaps television audiences don’t tune-in to our new show, theater goers skip our new release movie (see my Lone Ranger post), or customers choose not to buy our new product.  Each of these are all very complicated endeavors, each with an infinite amount of variables that we can try to control for.  We can layout the most thorough and thoughtful plan but sometimes we will miss the mark – we will fail.

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Disney’s Lone Ranger Fails to Win Over Fans, May Force a $100+ Million Write-Down

According to MarketWatch, Disney’s The Lone Ranger brought in just $48.9 million in its first five days in theaters.  Industry experts estimate that the movie cost between $215 million and $250 million to create.  With such high production costs, analysts have a bleak outlook that Disney will be able to recoup their costs even with overseas royalties.  How in the era of powerful market testing can there be such a big gap between expectations and reality.  How can there still be such big box office failures?  Many of the biggest bombs are able to recoup revenue through global distribution (see the list of the Biggest Movie Failures).

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To Not Worry About What Can Be Done but Enjoy What Has Been Done

So today is the 1st anniversary of launching my blog on leadership, innovation, and failure.  I cannot even start to explain how much I have learned along the way.  My goal was to mix my ideas and my research trying to post at least one article per week.  Over the last year I have written 68 posts which have been read by over 5000 unique visitors to the blog.  I would like to offer a huge “thank you” to everyone who took the time to comment, provide feedback, or help share my articles with your networks!

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Connecting the Dots on Innovation: It Must Be Part of a System and 3 Out of 4 Projects Fail

Last month consulting firm Accenture released a report (“Why Low-Risk Innovation Is Costly“) on the state of innovation at big companies from the U.S., U.K., and France.  Their survey of 519 executives at large companies concluded that most were disappointed with the return on their innovation investment.  Many of these companies cited that they were scaling back their disruptive innovation efforts and settling for more incremental innovation like product line extensions.

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Moving Beyond Big Data, Why More Leaders Should Focus on Their “Dark Data”

Big Data has been all the rage for the last couple of years as companies try to figure out how to mine all of the bits and bytes that are captured and stored from their business processes.

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Lessons from a Friend on Character, Courage, Family, and Mortality

Last year I had the chance to do an interview with a former classmate and friend Lt. Col. Mark Weber on his thoughts regarding “Leadership, Learning, and Failure.”  Three years ago Mark had gotten a request to rejoin General David Petraeus as he was appointed to take command of the war in Afghanistan.  From a routine blood draw and examination it was discovered that what Mark thought had been an ulcer was in fact cancer.  For the last few years, Mark has taken great care to share his journey in his fight against cancer illuminating his circumstances to help others in their fight.  Frequently he didn’t have “answers” from the medical community so he decided to lead the assault himself, figuring it out along the way.  In the summer of 2012 Mark decided to take control of writing his own narrative too, wanting to share not just his cancer journey but his life story in a book Tell My Sons.  Like every father, he wanted to hand down his thoughts, ideas, and lessons learned for his sons.

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Last Night the Miami Heat Destroyed the San Antonio Spurs, but Should It Have Been the Lakers Instead?

Last night the Miami Heat absolutely destroyed a San Antonio Spurs team that looked like they shouldn’t have even been on the court.  Maybe that’s because according to all of the preseason stats and punditry it should have been the Los Angeles Lakers?  But when the Lakers lost to the Spurs in the first round of the playoffs their season ended.  In sports, as in business, the best laid plans don’t always work out as expected.

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