Failure is Good!

Last week my blog entries focused on market research and asking whether or not it is something you should consider before sinking your savings into a business.

I hope it provoked some positive thinking.

Today I would like to round off the brief series with a statement. Failure is good!

Just ask anyone who has ever succeeded. Thomas Edison even made a career of it and famously stated, Results? Why, man, I have gotten lots of results! If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is often a step forward....

Testing your business ideas on the market is exactly the same as inventing the light bulb and the more disruptive your business idea is the more you need to make sure you really understand the market dynamics and sentiments. If you don’t, be prepared for an expensive failure as opposed to a good one.

The ten questions approach I outlined last week is proven to work and help businesses quickly and relatively easily find out whether their idea is good, bad or most likely -  'Could be good, but needs some refining and tuning to fit what the market wants.'  You can do this many, many times quickly and easily. By listening to the market and working with it, the market will come with you. It is in the interests of the market to do so.

The best part about it is simply that it only really costs time and done right helps you discard the parts of your idea that won’t work in the market and really focus in on those that do – why not make sure to stack the odds in your favour, no one else will?

There will be a couple of case studies about this when the book and updated site launch at the beginning of next month, but the bottom is this, when we have done this in the past on more than one occasion, it has led to companies winning some very big contracts right at the point when they launch.