Celebrating failure!

A museum is always an ode to all things great, where we see works and collections of super achievers. So museums represent and celebrate success, right?

Well, Sweden could prove this to be wrong. Come June this year and it will host world’s first museum which will failures in its Museum of Failure. Colleting all that which have failed has been the pet peeve of Samuel West and this museum is his brainchild. It will put on display absurd and completely hilarious failures of companies.

There is Colgate’s unappetizing beef lasagna (imagine buying a food product which is named just like your toothpaste!), Harley Davidson’s leathery-smelling perfume, Bic’s “lady’s” writing pen, Coca-Cola’s coffee-flavoured cola drink – Blak. It will also an flawed product design – this one from Nokia, its N-Gage smartphone which had to be disassembled to change games; very few games were available; and you had to open it like a taco to use the phone!

Then there are products on display where their own ideas proved to be their doomsday. Like the CEO of Blockbuster DVD, the undisputed video rental market leader, promoted streaming of movies and that is what ultimately led to the company going phut in 2013%. Or for that matter, Kodak which simply refused to adapt to changing times – it continued stubbornly with printing photos when the world was moving towards digital photos and photo sharing.

This museum is actually is a great idea. We need to always remember our failures as they were the stepping stones to success. Like every success, every failure is spectacular as what it takes in its wake, no success can. As Samuel West says, this museum seeks to de-stigmatize personal and professional failure. More power to failures!