Promoting business success through a study of failures

The glass “has to be half full.”

In making reference to that in an article on entrepreneurialism and entity start-ups, the publication Business Insider means this: Any new commercial enterprise seeking to enter, profit and endure in the business world must have at least a modicum of well-placed hope for success. Entering America’s rough-and-tumble commercial universe with, well, a glass more than half empty is hardly a recipe for downstream success.

And, yet, that is precisely what legions of new business owners do routinely in California and across the rest of the country, notes the Insider. They launch a product or service without having first given due consideration to its placement or having reasonably determined whether there is even an existing or potential market for it. They don’t have solid — and multiple — funding sources in place. They might be underestimating challenges from competitors, to their ultimate peril — and sometimes quick demise.

Those and many additional reasons, states the Insider, go far toward explaining why there is “over a 50% chance that any new business is toast in five years.”

In many instances, it doesn’t have to turn out that way. When closely examined, a report and attendant findings on “why so many businesses fail” can alternatively be scrutinized from the perspective of “what drives company success.” Looking at failure in an instructive way can yield sharp insights and learned lessons for new business players who are understandably seeking to survive rather than perish in what the Insider terms the “cruel world” of American business.

We’ll have a bit more to say on the subject in our next blog post.