Why failure is a good--and potentially lucrative--thing

Whether you're an inventor, an entrepreneur, someone trying to find a job, or just seeking make headway in the job you're already in, chances are that you can learn a thing or two from James Dyson. Provided you know who he is, of course: whether the name rings a bell or not, you've likely seen him advertising the vacuum cleaner that bears his moniker (you know: the one with the ball in the bottom). His company's also behind the Airblade, one of them new-fangled hand dryers that, as Dyson more or less says in the video below, scrapes water off your hands with a concentrated jet of air, rather than trying to evaporate it off with warm air. More interestingly, Dyson is a man who admits to having failed over and over and over again in his pursuit of success. Even his company's hand dryer, he says, is the result of many failed attempts to invent something else, although he won't specify what--but the important thing is that the idea to turn the air jet from the failed project into a hand dryer only came when he and his staff were playing around after failing. To get that lesson in Dyson's owns words (which I'd recommend—he tells it better!), plus more of his thoughts on the benefits of failing, check out the full video, courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.

--Posted by Phil Stott, Associate Producer, Web Content