Learning from mistakes - 13th October 2023

Washington DC has opened an art gallery called the Museum of Failure. Johanna Guttmann organised the exhibition. Guttmann’s trying to change people’s opinion about failure.

Johanna Guttmann: "The products that we are saying that they are failures are subjective, debatable, but it is about that conversation. So we are sort of having fun with it, we want to take away the stigma from it. So I think the fun factor makes it much more attractive to people."

The exhibition started in 2017 in Sweden. It includes ideas from around the world that failed. Many of these ideas are from famous companies like Starbucks and Oreo.

Starbucks tried to sell a coffee drink with olive oil. But this sent customers to the toilet. Trump’s Monopoly game was too complicated. So, not many people bought it. Oreo made biscuits with unusual flavours, which many people found unpleasant.

Johanna Guttmann: "I’ve heard that one of the most disgusting things, not featured here, is the barbecue chicken wings - it’s rather vile."

Guttmann wants people to feel comfortable with failing.

She thinks that people can learn important lessons from making mistakes.

Johanna Guttmann: "The goal of the exhibition is the conversation about failure, and destigmatizing failure and to a certain extent, embracing it and understanding that it is a very important component if we want to innovate and solve big problems in the world, we're going to have to take some risks and try different things."

Guttmann would like people to talk about their failures.

Visitors can write down their experiences with failure and put them on a board. But people are afraid to do this.

Guttmann thinks that this is because of social media.

Johanna Guttmann: "Today with social media, I believe that it's harder to fail. I think that people feel their failures are sort of amplified on social media. And it sort of follows you and it seems maybe larger than it actually is."