Friday, February 27, 2009

US is not a Failure Shy Country

One of the interesting concepts that amazed me during my US trip was the concept of the acceptance of failure. I remember when I was in Tokyo, I came across stories related to suicide or Hara-kiri if one fails in life. Failure is not at all acceptable in Japanese society; it puts a lot of pressure on individuals to succeed. Recent economic crisis affected many businesses, a lot of companies have filed chapter 11 of bankruptcy. Organizations and people are determined to come up with better ideas, learn from mistakes and bounce back. There are thousands of ideas generated every year, very few succeed but idea generation process continues, failure does not deter idea generation process. I remember I visited an Incubator in Charlotte ‘North Carolina’, anyone has idea can start with one person organization from a place, having complete infrastructure ‘called incubator’. Experts are housed; provide free expert information to new businesses or entrepreneurs housed there. If an idea fails, entrepreneurs leave the incubators, they come back with better idea, and neither incubators nor banks discourage them. I was impressed, the way everyone responds to failure, it is a nation which is impressively not at all failure shy.

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