Ah, the cruel and bitter irony of success; once you've achieved it, you trade in the creativity that brought you there for managing what to do with it. We do need to popularize failure again, though not with a wave of hype, but a slow undercurrent. Perhaps the drama of the trials involved would sell.

There are virtually an infinitude of ways to fail, but only a few ways to succeed. Figuring out a way to fail isn't really all that difficult, and does not deserve much compensation in my opinion.

Besides, most how-to books on any topic, from investment banking to lesbian sex, already warn readers against common mistakes that amateurs are likely to commit. Anyone who's discovered a success strategy is most often already familiar with the kinds of mistakes that his peers make, and if he has any intention of teaching others about his strategy, he will also say something about which mistakes to watch out for.

In terms of business case studies, a failure analysis would serve a great many folks who develop courses for industry. Often a business failure is like a classic theatre tragedy, where on the cusp of success, something goes wrong... and quite often, that something does not seem like "failure" but in hindsight turns out to be that.... in not effectively looking at failures, some of which we'd be better off from if they succeeded, we deprive ourselves of a great wealth of knoweldge. It is a good idea, just not realistic in a culture of organic-value-creation-avoiding-because-its-boring capitalists.

This sounds like failure-analysis, which always seems to occur after the fact. I think you are right, but this kind of “learning material” is already sold in a number of ways. Just the other day I was watching a program on the Discovery channel that had to do with the fact that most large projects are significantly over budget and has a variety of other ailments. Some even fail outright.

At the deepest level, our failures really relate to how we think, so what you are saying is, there should be a market for our misunderstandings. Now, I presume that it would be a lot more valuable if one could catch these flaws in our assumptions and our thinking before they hurt us. But that unfortunately, takes a little more than scenario planning – it needs a kind of openness of mind that is not too common today.

In a sense, this kind of thinking is similar to what we find on this board. But while its fun to challenge each other here, challenging ideas in a hierarchy (like a company) often has disastrous consequences – especially if your challenge gets uncomfortably close to the belief system of someone higher up the chain of command. Nothing pisses people off as much as when you challenge their judgment.

There is a fascinating museum of failed products(http://www.newproductworks.com) which has been much written about (e.g. http://www.lang-plus.com/news/flops/product_flopsr.htm).

There are quite a few good books on failure which have some good anecdotes of bad decision making. My favorites are "Great Planning Disasters" by Peter Hall, "Normal Accidents" by Charles Perrow, "To Engineer Is Human" by Henry Petroski, and "The Logic of Failure" by Dietrich Dorner.

Failure is a risk taken with unacceptable results. Maybe the word itself is overused. "Frustrated" might be a better word when trying to find a solution. "Upon deciding a plan of attack and I quickly became frustrated." "I am constantly being frustrated, nothing I do seems to succeed."

Afterall, you aren't a failure until you ultimately stop trying.

Robert Glass, a Computerworld columnist, wrote a self-published book in the 60's called Computer Projects That [or "Which"] Failed. His introduction suggested that computerists would learn more from studying how to avoid being wrong than how to be right.

I think that applies to education in general: it would be better to learn 101 things to avoid, than the latest way to be right.