Fail Fast and Fail Often

Google Buzz is going away. I think it was a Twitter knockoff.

Regardless, I can't say I'll miss it, because I'm pretty sure I never actually used it.

Google does a lot of things that fail. In fact, most of the things they do fail. But the things that hit, like Adsense, hit big.

The business I'm in, music, is the same way. Only one out of every eight albums make money.

Which brings up the question, "How do you know when something will fail?"

The answer... You don't.

Speculation kills innovation and growth. The only way to really play the game is to jump in and see what happens. We can speculate and assume all day, but in the end, the only way you're going to find out what will happen is by getting in the ring.

Comments

[Tim Rueb]

Agreed. Companies that innovate do fail a lot. What i think Google is doing well is attacking itself. Buzz and some other items are being dropped because their capabilities are moved into Google+ or their resources are no long helping Google achieve their results.

Now music would be an interesting problem to solve. From the time of creation (creativity), to the time of sales (economic transaction), is fairly long. But in between there must be major milestones of the process with tons of things to innovate and make lots of mistake, but find some better ways to do things too.

Great post.