Posts Tagged As Scarlet Letter F

Innovation & Risk-Taking: Why Social Learning Theory Matters in Business and in Golf

Last week I spent four days playing eight rounds of golf in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, with 19 other guys.  That is 144 holes in just over 96 hours.  Before you ask the question the answer is yes!  Yes, we are absolutely a little crazy!  We are also equally passionate about the game of golf.  Through this marathon of golf I noticed that something happened to us all when we are playing.  On the golf course, just as in the office, we were adjusting to our environment and influencing each other’s behavior.

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Target Misses the Mark – a Failed Holiday Partnership With Neiman Marcus

The king of conservative retail, Target Corp, just had a rare sighting… a failure?  While Target might not be the most conservative retailer out there they certainly wouldn’t be considered a big risk taker.  In fact, just two years ago Target announced they were taking the huge leap into “international” retailing.  If you are keeping track that was a full 20 years after Wal-Mart opened its first international store, Mexico City, Mexico, in 1991!  Well, we are still waiting for the Target Canada stores to open in March/April 2013 but Target’s recent partnership with Neiman Marcus has officially been deemed a failure. See Time’s recent article titled Epic Retail Fail: Where Did the Target + Neiman Marcus Collection Go Wrong?

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Silicon Valley has moved from tolerating failure to embracing it. When will the rest of us?

Last month Inc. magazine ran an article titled “Why Silicon Valley Loves Failure” about how failure has moved beyond a buzzword in the land of Internet startups. The author (Eric Markowitz@EricMarkowitz) shared the story of mid-’90s entrepreneur Kamran Elahian. Elahian had custom plates for his Ferrari F355 made with the word “Momenta.” Momenta was the name of a company that he founded in back 1989. Great, so what you say? There are thousands of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who drive around with their company’s name on the vanity plates. The interesting point was that Elahian chose the name of his previous company that had already gone bankrupt back in 1992. When ask why he chose his failed company, Elahian responded with “It’s to remind me not to be too proud. Unlike other entrepreneurs who put the names of successful companies on license plates, I decided to put my biggest failure. That way, I have to be reminded of it every time I get in the car.” He had moved beyond accepting his failure to being proud of his failures (see my post on the idea of a having a Failure Resume).

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