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Failure (colloquially
Colloquialism

A colloquialism is an expression not used in formal Speech communication, writing or paralinguistics. Colloquialisms are also sometimes referred to collectively as "colloquial language"....
 fail, phail, flop or flub) in general refers to the state or condition
Condition

Condition can refer to:* A state of being.* Living condition, see Quality of life.* In health, a disease, such as a heart condition, as in Medical condition....
 of not meeting a desirable or intended objective. It may be viewed as the opposite of success
Success

Success may mean:* a level of social status* achievement of an objective * the opposite of failure...
. Product failure ranges from failure to sell the product to fracture
Fracture

A fracture is the separation of an object or material into two, or more, pieces under the action of stress .The word fracture is often applied to bones of living creatures, or to crystals or crystalline materials, such as gemstones or metal....
 of the product, in the worst cases leading to personal injury, the province of forensic engineering
Forensic engineering

Forensics engineering is the investigation of material science, product , structures or components that fail or do not operate/function as intended, causing personal injury or damage to property....
.

criteria for failure are heavily dependent on context of use, and may be relative
Moral relativism

In philosophy moral relativism is the position that Morality or Ethics propositions do not reflect Moral objectivism and/or universal moral truths, but instead make claims relativism to Society, Culture, History or personal circumstances....
 to a particular observer
Observation

Observation is either an activity of a living being , consisting of receiving knowledge of the outside world through the senses, or the recording of data using scientific instruments....
 or belief system.






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Quotations


Another failure is just another different result, but not the desired one.

Failure is not an option.

Gene Kranz, Flight Director NASA, During the Apollo XIII Crisis

If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.

If we do not succeed we run the risk of failure. ~ Dan Quayle, Vice President of the United States.

This organization does not tolerate failure. ~ Ernst Stavro Blofeld, head of SPECTRE, in the James Bond series written by Ian Fleming.

Failing to plan is planning to fail.






Encyclopedia


Train Wreck At Montparnasse 1895
Failure (colloquially
Colloquialism

A colloquialism is an expression not used in formal Speech communication, writing or paralinguistics. Colloquialisms are also sometimes referred to collectively as "colloquial language"....
 fail, phail, flop or flub) in general refers to the state or condition
Condition

Condition can refer to:* A state of being.* Living condition, see Quality of life.* In health, a disease, such as a heart condition, as in Medical condition....
 of not meeting a desirable or intended objective. It may be viewed as the opposite of success
Success

Success may mean:* a level of social status* achievement of an objective * the opposite of failure...
. Product failure ranges from failure to sell the product to fracture
Fracture

A fracture is the separation of an object or material into two, or more, pieces under the action of stress .The word fracture is often applied to bones of living creatures, or to crystals or crystalline materials, such as gemstones or metal....
 of the product, in the worst cases leading to personal injury, the province of forensic engineering
Forensic engineering

Forensics engineering is the investigation of material science, product , structures or components that fail or do not operate/function as intended, causing personal injury or damage to property....
.

Criteria for failure

The criteria for failure are heavily dependent on context of use, and may be relative
Moral relativism

In philosophy moral relativism is the position that Morality or Ethics propositions do not reflect Moral objectivism and/or universal moral truths, but instead make claims relativism to Society, Culture, History or personal circumstances....
 to a particular observer
Observation

Observation is either an activity of a living being , consisting of receiving knowledge of the outside world through the senses, or the recording of data using scientific instruments....
 or belief system. A situation considered to be a failure by one might be considered a success by another, particularly in cases of direct competition
Competition

Competition is a rivalry between individuals, groups, nations, or animals, for territory, a niche, or allocation of resources. It arises whenever two or more parties strive for a goal which cannot be shared....
 or a zero-sum game. As well, the degree of success or failure in a situation may be differently viewed by distinct observers or participants, such that a situation that one considers to be a failure, another might consider to be a success, a qualified success or a neutral situation.

It may also be difficult or impossible to ascertain whether a situation meets criteria for failure or success due to ambiguous or ill-defined definition of those criteria. Finding useful and effective criteria, or heuristic
Heuristic

Heuristic is an adjective for methods that help in problem solving, in turn leading to learning and discovery. These methods in most cases employ experimentation and trial-and-error techniques....
s, to judge the success or failure of a situation may itself be a significant task.

Types of failure

Failure can be differentially perceived from the viewpoints of the evaluators. A person who is only interested in the final outcome of an activity would consider it to be an Outcome Failure if the core issue has not been resolved or a core need is not met. A failure can also be a process failure whereby although the activity is completed successfully, a person may still feel dissatisfied if the underlying process is perceived to be below expected standard or benchmark.

  1. Failure to anticipate
    Prediction

    A prediction is a statement or claim that a particular event will occur in the future in more certain terms than a forecasting. The etymology of this word is Latin ....
  2. Failure to perceive
    Perception

    In psychology and the cognitive sciences, perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sense information. It is a task far more complex than was imagined in the 1950s and 1960s, when it was predicted that building perceiving machines would take about a decade, a goal which is still very far from fruition....
  3. Failure to carry out a task


Commercial failures

A commercial failure is a product
Product (business)

The noun product is defined as a "thing produced by labor or effort" or the "result of an act or a process", and stems from the verb produce from the Latin produce, lead or bring forth....
 that does not reach expectations of success, failing to come even close. A major flop goes one step further and is recognized for its complete lack of success.

Most of the items listed below had high expectations, significant financial investments, and/or widespread publicity, but fell far short of success. Due to the subjective nature of "success" and "meeting expectations", there can be disagreement about what constitutes a "major flop."

  • For flops in computer and video gaming, see List of commercial failures in computer and video gaming
    List of commercial failures in computer and video gaming

    As a hit-driven business, the great majority of the video games Video game industry's software releases have been commercial failures. In the early 21st century, rules of thumb noted by industry commentators estimated that 10% of published games generated 90% of revenue; that around 3% of PC games and 15% of console games have global sales of 100,0...
  • For company failures related to the 1997–2001 Dot-com bubble
    Dot-com bubble

    The "dot-com bubble" was a economic bubble covering roughly 1995?2001 during which stock markets in Western world saw their value increase rapidly from growth in the new quaternary sector of industry and related fields....
    , see Dot-com company
    Dot-com company

    A dot-com company, or simply a dot-com , is a company that does most of its business on the Internet, usually through a website that uses the popular Generic top-level domain, ".com" ....
  • See also Vaporware
    Vaporware

    Vaporware is a term used to describe a software or hardware product that is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge after having well exceeded the period of development time that was initially claimed or would normally be expected for the development cycle of a similar product....


Internet meme

"Fail" is the name of a popular Internet meme
Internet meme

The term Internet meme is a neologism used to describe a catchphrase or concept that spreads quickly from person to person via the Internet, much like an inside joke....
 where users superimpose the word "fail" or "epic fail" onto embarrassing, ironic, or compromising photos or short videos. The term "miserable failure" has also been popularized as a result of a widely known "Google bomb
Google bomb

The terms Google bomb and Googlewashing refer to practices intended to influence the ranking of particular pages, in results returned by the Google search engine....
ing", which caused Google search
Google search

Google search is a Web search engine owned by Google, and is the most used search engine on the World Wide Web. Google receives several hundred million queries each day through its various services....
es for the term to turn up the White House biography of George W. Bush
George W. Bush

George Walker Bush served as the List of Presidents of the United States President of the United States from 2001 to 2009. He was the 46th List of Governors of Texas from 1995 to 2000 before being United States presidential inauguration as President on January 20, 2001....
.

See also

  • Cascading failure
    Cascading failure

    A cascading failure is a failure in a system of interconnected parts in which the failure of a part can trigger the failure of successive parts....
  • Debugging
    Debugging

    Debugging is a methodical process of finding and reducing the number of computer bugs, or defects, in a computer program or a piece of electronic hardware thus making it behave as expected....
  • Failure analysis
    Failure analysis

    Failure analysis is the process of collecting and analyzing data to determine the cause of a failure and how to prevent it from recurring. It is an important discipline in many branches of manufacturing industry, such as the electronics industry, where it is a vital tool used in the development of new products and for the improvement of exist...
  • Failure rate
    Failure rate

    Failure rate is the frequency with which an engineered system or component failure, expressed for example in failures per hour. It is often denoted by the Greek alphabet ? and is important in reliability theory....
  • Failure mode
    Failure mode

    Failure causes are defects in design, process, quality, or part application, which are the underlying cause of the failure or which initiate a process which leads to failure....
  • Forensic engineering
    Forensic engineering

    Forensics engineering is the investigation of material science, product , structures or components that fail or do not operate/function as intended, causing personal injury or damage to property....
  • List of military disasters
    List of military disasters

    A military disaster is when one side in a battle or war is unexpectedly and soundly defeated, and often changes the course of history.A military disaster can range from a strong army losing a major battle against a clearly inferior force, to an army being surprised and defeated by a clearly superior force, to a seemingly evenly matched conf...
  • List of railway disasters
  • Murphy's law
    Murphy's law

    File:Train wreck at Montparnasse 1895.jpgMurphy's law is an adage in Western culture that broadly states: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong."...
  • New product development
    New product development

    In business and engineering, new product development is the term used to describe the complete process of bringing a new product or service to market....
  • Non-event
    Non-event

    A non-event is an anticipated or highly publicized event that either does not occur or turns out to be anticlimactic, boring, or a hoax. Non-events are disappointing because they are often hyped prior to their occurrence....
  • Planned obsolescence
    Planned obsolescence

    Planned obsolescence or built-in obsolescence is the process of a good becoming obsolete and/or non-functional after a certain period or amount of use in a way that is planned or designed by the manufacturer....
     (also built-in obsolescence)
  • Power outage
    Power outage

    A power outage refers to the short- or long-term loss of the electric power to an area.There are many causes of power failures in an electricity network....
  • Product
    Product (business)

    The noun product is defined as a "thing produced by labor or effort" or the "result of an act or a process", and stems from the verb produce from the Latin produce, lead or bring forth....
  • Product management
    Product management

    Product management is an organizational lifecycle function within a company dealing with the planning or marketing of a product or products at all stages of the product lifecycle....
  • Single point of failure
    Single Point of Failure

    A Single Point of Failure, , is a part of a system which, if it fails, will stop the entire system from working. They are undesirable in any system whose goal is high availability, be it a network, software application or other industrial system....
  • Structural failure
    Structural failure

    Structural failure refers to loss of the Structural load-carrying capacity of a component or member within a Architectural structure or of the structure itself....
  • Tensile strength
    Tensile strength

    Tensile strength , or is the Stress at which a material breaks or permanently deforms. Tensile strength is an Intensive and extensive properties and, consequently, does not depend on the size of the test specimen....
  • White elephant
    White elephant

    A white elephant is a valuable possession which its owner cannot dispose of and whose cost exceeds its usefulness....
  • System accident
    System Accident

    A system accident is defined as the "unanticipated interaction of multiple failures" in a complex system. This complexity can either be technological or organizational, and often has elements of both....


Further reading

  • Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies, New Tork: Basic Books, 1983. Paperback reprint, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-691-00412-9
  • Sandage, Scott A.
    Scott Sandage

    Scott A. Sandage is a cultural history at Carnegie Mellon University [1]. He is best known as the author of Born Losers: A History of Failure in America....
     Born Losers: A History of Failure in America. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-674-01510-X, ISBN 0-674-02107-X


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