Success Requires Experimental Failure

In his innovation keynote, award-winning author and Trend Hunter CEO Jeremy Gutsche offers entrepreneurial business advice that both new and existing businesses can apply. One of Jeremy's major philosophies is based around the idea of expected failure. While he understands that the concept of expected failure is hard for many to grasp, he insists that following and reaching your dreams will involve failing -- and lots of it.

Jeremy's book -- which you can read for FREE here -- includes a number of examples -- some popular and some less known -- of successful stories in sports, fiction, film and technology that experienced rejection and failure in their early stages.

"Technology: During the tech boom, Cisco was the largest company in the world. In its early days, the company was rejected by an astonishing 76 venture capital firms before receiving funding.

Sports: Michael Jordan was the greatest basketball player of all time, but he was cut from his high school basketball team.

Fiction: John Grisham is one of the most successful novelists of all time. He was rejected by a couple dozen publishers before getting his first big deal. He actually sold copies of his first book, 'A Time to Kill,' out of the trunk of his car.

Film: In 2009 Slumdog Millionaire won 8 Oscars. A year prior, the original producer, Warner Bros., lost confidence in the film. They sold half their investment to Fox Searchlight and later pulled the plug completely. If it wasn't for Fox Searchlight, Slumdog would not have made it to the big screen.

Science: Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, but he acually failed miserably along the way."

Jeremy insists that failure is a part of any learning process, especially business. Successful ideas require plenty of experimentation, testing and being wrong.