FAIL

28 March 2011 at 11:54 pm Peter G. Klein 2 comments

| Peter Klein |

an open space for development professionals who recognize that the only “bad” failure is one that’s repeated. Those who are willing to share their missteps to ensure they don’t happen again. It is a community and a resource, all designed to establish new levels of transparency, collaboration, and innovation within the development sector.

Thanks to Josh Gans for the tip and some interesting discussion of failure in other contexts. (I’m not sure I’d use the term “missing market,” though; M&As, bankruptcy court, and indeed any asset markets could be described as markets for failure!)

Here’s an interesting paper by Rita McGrath on entrepreneurial failure. And of course there are huge academic literatures on divestitures, bankruptcies, and the like. At O&M we’ve often criticized bailouts and stimulus policy for retarding Schumpeterian competition by making it more difficult to identify, rectify, and learn from failures.

Entry filed under: - Klein -, Bailout / Financial Crisis, Entrepreneurship.

Information versus Knowledge Confusing Definitions of Entrepreneurship

2 Comments Add your own

1. Michael E. Marotta | 29 March 2011 at 6:51 pm

We specially condemn some business failiures. Numismatists know the era of “obsolete banknotes” also as the era of “wildcat banking” 1819-1857. In the words of Krause Publications, advertising their Standard Catalog of United States Paper Money: “Banking practices prior to the mid-19th century were larcenous at best,” Walter Breen called these fiduciary instruments “dishonest paper.” The Encyclopedia Americana says that they were “less than satisfactory.” Yet, like milk or a haircut, even money is only worth whatever someone else is willing to offer you for it. There should be no mystery in that.

After the Federal Treasury created the National banking system which required that a bank deposit at least $25,000 in gold with the Treasury, banks still failed. They were businesses like pharmacies and livery stables and shoe factories. But we specailly condemn the failures of banks as the cause of everyone else’s woes.
2. Celebrating Failure « entrepreneurship@McQuinn | 11 April 2011 at 6:18 pm

[…] a recent O&M post I referenced Rita McGrath’s work on organizational failure; today she blogs about Tata […]