only for persistant
When I was still a student I heard an interesting comparision about Jack and Hans on a lecture of a Swiss professor (unfortunatelly I forgot his name). Jack is of course American businessman and Hans is German. The key difference between them is that if Jack's business fails, he will try another 20 times to succeed, while Hans will only did it once. After first failure Jack will say: "I know exactly what I did wrong. I will do it better and I will manage it next time.". Hans would probably commit suicide after his first business fails.
The comparison is of course totally hypotetic, but shows well the difference in thinking about past failures. Even more important is, as Paul is pointing out nicely (an American, of course), that usually
the most successful companies or products are made on the remains of 20 to 30 failures.
Paul explains well that changes are not linear, but in form of S curve. And based on this some starting trials will have to fail, while 1 will just be a huge success.
Did you know that there were 35 companies who tried to develop virtual worlds before Second Life, but without success?And what does it mean for marketing?
Do not copy what competition did well. Copy that they did not manage. Take the failed ideas, think about why they failed and find out if they can be changed so that they become really big success?