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This Swedish Museum Celebrates Market “Failure”

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Ever wonder what happens to consumer products after they fail miserably? For example, where do products like the Microsoft Zune go to die? Now, thanks to a new museum in Sweden, market failures have a place to have a life-after-death and be displayed for all mankind to see. But the mere fact that these wonders of enterprise are now being used to entertain museum patrons proves one of the most integral aspects of the free market–failure, in itself–fuels progress.

“80 to 90 percent of all innovation projects fail,” Museum of Failure curator Samuel West told the Huffington Post, also mentioning that often, consumers are never even exposed to these products before they are pulled from the market. This mystery of innovative failure is what makes this museum so fascinating because at the end of the day, without market duds, we wouldn’t have those truly great products that prove themselves to consumers time and again.

With each failure, there is a new lesson learned. As the great Nicolas Cage says in the film National Treasure:

“Thomas Edison tried and failed nearly 2,000 times to develop the carbonized cotton-thread filament for the incandescent light bulb. And when asked about it, he said ‘I didn’t fail; I found out 2,000 ways how not to make a lightbulb.’”

But as West points out, it becomes much harder to learn from these conventional failures, when we cannot see them and many of us do not even know of their existence at all. For example, one of the museum’s featured products, the short-lived Apple Newton, was a flop with consumers but helped lay the foundation for the iPhone and the iPad.

So the time has come to praise those innovators who had the courage to bring their terrible ideas to market and were wise enough to learn from their mistakes.

Heinz Green Sauce

…because who wouldn’t want the same great tomato-y taste of Heinz Ketchup, but with a rotten green color? Apparently, no one wanted to buy it, or consume it, which is how it ended up in the museum of failures, to begin with. Even attempting to capitalize on the popularity of the Shrek franchise failed to get children on board with using green slime as a kitchen condiment. And for those children whose parents purchased this green goo thinking it would be a real kid-pleaser, all it really did was make adults, like myself, dry heave watching these juveniles choke down rancid-looking ketchup.

Crystal Pepsi

While conventional wisdom might classify this product as a textbook “failure,” I’m going to have to disagree with this being a market failure but rather, a PR nightmare! Truthfully Crystal Pepsi wasn’t that interesting, but as a child growing up in the 90s, drinking a beverage that looked like sparkling water but tasted like regular Pepsi was thrilling. In fact, as I was raised in a family where soda was only permitted under very special circumstances, I was pleased to learn that clear cola qualified as a special occasion. However, America’s fascination with this clear beverage dwindled after a nationwide hoax spread throughout the country as consumers began reporting that they had found syringe needles inside cans of Crystal Pepsi. While the claims were not substantiated, the rumors were enough to ruin this soda’s reputation, earning it a spot in Sweden’s unique museum.

Google Glass

Oh Google Glass, to this day no one is entirely sure what the draw of the actual design was, other than embarrassing your friends in public. Google Glass was a dismal failure that is now immortalized in the Museum of Failure and numerous Buzzfeed listicles highlighting how ridiculous users looked while donning the futuristic goggles.In theory, Google Glass was a true manifestation of the future, almost like something straight out of a Marvel comic book. But with a hefty price tag of $1,500, these glasses were not a practical purchase for the everyday consumer. While the idea was great, the masses may just not have been ready to embrace a world filled with glassholes. As West puts it, “Google released it too early, it was still a prototype full of bugs.”

Twitter Peek

If you’re like most people, you have no memory of the Twitter Peek. Launched in the golden age of the iPhone, this product really didn’t serve a necessary purpose for consumers. Created by a mobile startup, this device was vastly out beat by smartphones which did more than just post to Twitter. Further dampening its success, it only displayed the first 20 characters of each tweet, making users click on each individual post in order to see it in its entirety. Needless to say, this product was quickly destroyed by smartphone technology.

New Coke

The cola wars were an interesting time in history so integral to 80s pop culture that it even earned a line in Billy Joel’s classic, “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” Even though Coca-Cola had maintained the same recipe for its classic soft drink for 99 years, in 1985 the company decided to up the ante and spice things up by introducing “New Coke.” Infamously regarded as one of the worst marketing campaigns in modern history, the new formula was promoted as an attempt to compete with the rising success of Pepsi-Cola, which consumers were beginning to favor for its sweeter taste.

So, of course, Coca-Cola decided to sweeten up their recipe, only it wasn’t met with the same consumer enthusiasm. While the consumer reviews favored the new taste, the company underestimated the American consumer’s nostalgic connection with the original Coca-Cola. After the company was bombarded with negative feedback from consumers, they rebranded their original recipe as “Coca-Cola Classic,” which oddly enough helped them ultimately declare victory against their competitors. New Coke may have been a market dud, but it actually resulted in a huge win for the company.

Moral of the Story: Failure Fuels Progress

While most of the products in this museum appear to be duds, each one taught their respective innovators a valuable lesson about the market process. For Coca-Cola and Heinz, both companies learned that sticking to their original recipes was more beneficial when it came to sales revenue.

Google, on the other hand, learned that it had a great product with Google Glass, but the excitement surrounding this innovation may have caused the company to rush their prototype to market before it was ready.

With each failure comes a lesson that, in the end, has resulted in a win for the consumer.

Why Market “Failure” Should Be Welcomed and Celebrated

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Failure is never pleasant. But it is a natural and essential part of life. As flawed human beings, each embarking on our own unique journey, we are bound to make mistakes. But these mishaps should not be viewed negatively. In fact, it is through our shortcomings that we grow and become stronger, better individuals.

Each time we fail to meet the challenge of a given task, we must make an important decision. We can either give up and abandon our quest because it becomes too difficult or, we can have an honest conversation with ourselves and address the issues that caused our shortcoming so that we can avoid making similar mistakes in the future.

The same is true of the market process. Each time a product fails, the creator has a chance to either give up on the project or learn from his mistakes and try again. You may not know it when you check your iPhone or drink your Coca-Cola Classic, for example, but you are reaping the benefits of someone’s failure.

Failure Leads to Discovery

Sweden recently opened a museum dedicated entirely to market failure. But the rejected objects on display at the Museum of Failure are not there to poke fun at the inventors or even the ideas themselves. Instead, it exists to celebrate all the wonderful lessons and successful innovations that came into existence as a direct result of market failure.

The museum’s curator, Samuel West, commented on this unique facility, saying:

“We know that 80-90 percent of all innovation projects, they fail. And you never read about them, you never see them, people don’t talk about them. If there is anything you can do from these failures, it’s learn from them. But you can’t learn about them if you can’t talk about them or see them.”

West and the others involved in the unconventional museum hope that by showcasing these products they can tell inspiring stories. They are also hoping to encourage future innovators and to teach an important lesson about the role failure plays in both personal and market development.

Visitors touring the museum will get to see infamous market rejects such as Crystal Pepsi, Google Glass, and the Microsoft Zune. But what is just as important as highlighting why these products failed is recognizing what this failure led to.  

Before smartphones and tablets were owned by nearly everyone, Apple invented the Newton MessagePad in 1993. Today, the Newton can be found within the walls of the Museum of Failure.

The Apple Newton MessagePad

Marketed as a portable, electronic device that could store contact information, take notes, and manage your calendar, the bulky Newton was the world’s first “personal digital assistant” (PDA). However, the Newton itself was a product ahead of its time and the technology needed to sustain it just wasn’t ready. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t still create immense value.

Lamenting the death of this early handheld device, Wired wrote:

“The Newton wasn’t just killed, it was violently murdered, dragged into a closet by its hair and kicked to death in its youth by one of technology’s great men. And yet it was a remarkable device, one whose influence is still with us today.”

While not a conventional success, the Newton MessagePad did, in many ways, change the world. For starters, it marked the beginning of Apple’s mission to create portable computers that were so small, they could easily fit in your pocket, a dream that would someday manifest itself in the modern world. But in the early 90s, this sounded like an idea better suited for a science fiction movie than reality.

As Wired says, “with Newton, Apple didn’t just set out to create a new device. It wanted to invent an entirely new class of computing.”

The device was great in theory, but each sold for $800 and the technology was spotty, to say the least. One of the minds behind the device, Steve Capps, commented, “We were just way ahead of the technology.”

One of the device’s most cutting-edge feature was its ability to translate the user’s handwriting into type. Unfortunately, the idea was better than the resources available at the time and the handwriting recognition feature was never able to perform as it should.

As the geniuses at Apple worked to find a solution to fix the Newton’s handwriting recognition, they accidentally stumbled upon a new technology that would largely impact our modern day.

Thanks to the Newton MessagePad, the “ARM processor” was invented. The ARM processor works by “stripping out unneeded instructions and optimizing pathways, RISC processors provide outstanding performance at a fraction of the power demand.” But the real appeal in using this new processing technology for the Newton MessagePad was that it was smaller making it ideal for handheld devices. Originally designed to help prolong the battery life of the Newton, today the ARM processor is used in smartphones, tablets, and wearable devices like the Apple Watch. 

Before his death, Steve Jobs commented on the Newton situation saying:

“If Apple had been in a less precarious situation, I would have drilled down myself to figure out how to make it work. I didn’t trust the people running it…By shutting it down, I freed up some good engineers who could work on new mobile devices. And eventually we got it right when we moved on to iPhones and the iPad.”

No one is born an instant success. Market victories are born of perseverance and a willingness to learn from your mistakes and create better, more efficient products.

Sure, the developers at Apple may have been discouraged by the flop of the Newton. But their work paved the way for the future of mobile devices. Without the discovery of the ARM processor, we may not have the same caliber of mobile devices we have grown accustomed to today.

With each failure, we are given a chance to grow, both as individuals and as innovators. Market failure should never be viewed as a sign to give up and throw in the towel. Instead, it should be welcomed and celebrated as part of the market process.

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