Why Failure Is a Better Option Than Never Trying

                                              
In 1975, Steve Sasson invented the first digital camera. He was an engineer working at Kodak. At the time, Kodak held 85 percent of the U.S. camera sales market while commanding 90 percent of film sales. There was no other company as well-poised to take digital photography by storm. When Sasson introduced his invention to his managers, their very first reaction was, “Don’t tell anyone about it.” Organizational inertia shut down Kodak’s digital potential. With a structure focused on film sales, management failed to see digital as disruptive technology. Even in 1981, after Sony had introduced the first electronic camera and Kodak’s CEO had commissioned a market study to survey the impact, Kodak’s very own researchers concluded that digital would take nearly 20 years for consumers to adopt.
The rest of the story is a well-known model of business decline and failure. Today, post-bankruptcy, Kodak relies on a trove of patents it developed over 100-plus years as an industry innovator, and Kodak’s story is a staple of business classrooms everywhere.
This isn’t an uncommon failure.
 BM initially dismissed the personal computer as a toy; once an electronics icon, Radio Shack is out of business; and in the 1990s, poised to take control of internet shopping, the most successful mail-in retailer of all time, Sears, decided to double-down on brick-and-mortar stores.
To explain their failure, you should take this lesson in why groundbreaking ideas almost always come out of nowhere:

Astonishing success requires moonshots.

When it comes to business as usual, go ahead and let your organizational inertia set your agenda. But if you want to stand out, create an astonishing level of success and truly revolutionize your industry, you need to take a page from the world’s greatest superachievers and business leaders…
Set big goals. Go for the moon. Big goals always lead to better outcomes and the reason why is simple:

Moonshot goals often result in failure, but that’s OK.

When you create a high,hard and nearly impossible to achieve goal,you are setting yourself up for failure. Yes, that’s right. I said, “You are setting yourself up for failure.”
But right now, I want you to take a step back and get over always being right. Because focusing your attention on a single, high, hard-hitting outcome will accomplish two important things.
First, you will be able to focus your attention on something greater. Now more than ever, we’re discovering the power of intrinsic rewards. Instead of incentivizing success and punishing failure, you’ll pair performance with purpose —the pursuit of something greater.
Second, big goals increase persistence. You will be more willing to try if you’ve already failed twice, three times or even 100 times before. With this in mind, ask yourself this:

Written by Peter Diamandis
Dr. Peter H. Diamandis is an international pioneer in the fields of innovation, incentive competitions and commercial spaceflight. In 2014 he was named one of “The World’s 50 Greatest Leaders” by Fortune magazine.
In the field of innovation, Diamandis is founder and executive chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation, best known for its $10 million Ansari XPRIZE for private spaceflight. Diamandis is also the co-founder and vice-chairman of Human Longevity Inc. (HLI), a genomics and cell therapy-based diagnostic and therapeutic company focused on extending the healthy human lifespan. He is also the co-founder and executive chairman of Singularuty University, a graduate-level Silicon Valley institution that studies exponentially growing technologies and their ability to transform industries and solve humanity’s grand challenges.
Connect to him at twitter.com/ Peter Diamandis