Art Fry shares views on Failure…
In my previous post When are you planning to fail ?, I argued that early failures were a far more effective learning tool than early successes. Those ‘gentle failures’ could help you avoid, or at least minimize the chances of ‘grand failures’. My colleague from PMI NPDSIG, Kimberly Johnson, shared that post with some of her ex-colleagues (Thanks Kim !), including Art Fry, inventor of perhaps most-well-known office product, Post-It Notes.  Here is what he wrote back: “Good article, Kim. In most product development programs you must consider dealing with failure, because only one in 3000 to 5000 raw ideas become a success. So the question is, How do you check out the failures as quickly and inexpensively as possible? Like this:Like Loading......
Are you helping your competitors succeed ?
I just read a nice story on the home page of Luke Watson, and was struck by its ‘simple power’. It goes like this: A few years ago, there was story going around about a farmer who won a particular category in the Nebraska State Fair four years in a row, which is unheard of there. The local newspaper sent a reporter to interview the farmer to find out what he did to achieve such a feat. The reporter asked, “What’s your secret? Do you have any special corn seed?” The farmer replied, “Absolutely, I develop my very own corn seed.” The reporter said, “Okay, so that’s your secret - you developed your very own corn seed.” And the farmer said, “No, not particularly.” The reporter exclaimed, “I don’t understand. What’s your secret, then?” The farmer said, “Well, I’ll...