We All Need Heroes

GREAT MISTAKES

Chapter: Success from Failures 

The Post-it note
The Post-it note were not a planned product. It was in fact the result of a failure. A man named Spencer Silver was working in the 3M research laboratories in 1970 trying to find a strong super glue (adhesive). Silver managed to developed the new adhesive, but it was even weaker than what 3M had already manufactured. It stuck to objects, but could easily be lifted off. It was super weak instead of super strong, and never really seemed to dry. Fascinated rather than embarrassed, Silver shared his results with co-workers, among them Arthur Fry. No one knew what to do with the stuff, but Silver didn’t discard it.
     One Sunday four years later Fry was singing in the church’s choir. He used markers to keep his place in the hymnal, but they kept falling out of the book. Remembering Silver’s adhesive, Fry used some to coat his markers. Success! With the weak adhesive, the markers stayed in place, yet lifted off without damaging the pages. The idea of the Post-it note was born. In 1980 3M began distributing Post-it notes nationwide and today they are one of the most popular office products available.

The Microwave
During the year 1945, Percy Spencer carried out some experiments with a new vacuum tube called a magnetron. He had a candy bar in his pocket, which suddenly began to melt. And that’s how one melted chocolate bar led to the discovery of the microwave oven.

The Penicillin
In 1928, Alexander Fleming went on vacation without cleaning his workstation. On his return he saw that strange fungus had formed on the cultures on his desk and found that bacteria couldn’t thrive on such cultures and thus he had by mistake invented the most widely used antibiotic in the world – Penicillin. Ironically, Fleming was searching for a “wonder drug” that could cure diseases at the time of the discovery, however, it wasn’t until he threw away his experiments that he found what he was looking for.

The Fail Whale
Regular Twitter users are familiar with the image of a smiling whale being lifted out of the ocean by a flock of birds. It appears when the hugely popular social media service crashes due to overloading. This now iconic image (it even has its own fan club) dubbed the Fail Whale has changed the life of its young designer. Yiying Lu, a university graduate from Sydney, says in an interview from Sydney Morning Herald, ‘How Fail Whale became a hit’ from 2009, that it’s “kind of a kismet (fate) thing” that her career is now associated with a failure page. It could have been disastrous for the young artist to have her most recognized work associated with failure but it turned out to be welcomed attention. Rather than having a page saying: “The page cannot be found” or “Server overloaded”, Lu’s illustration actually made it more interesting and gave an alternative way of taking failure.

Possible Moral
These are four great examples of how failure can be turned into success. Failure is nothing more than not getting the desired outcome the first time around. No one who is living their dreams started out perfectly. They just didn’t quit when failure was the results of their efforts. Learn to open up your mind and to see things from different perspectives. 

Story from We All Need Heroes: Stories of the Brave and Foolish.
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