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prologue

INNOVATIO N

tattoo. “Failing hurts and it may not look good,” rea- picked up in Stockholm Harbor and, lacking the bal-
sons West, “but it will pass.” last to counterweight the heavy artillery, the ship
He may as well be describing the Apple Newton heeled until water rushed in through its open gun
MessagePad, a bulky hand-held gizmo from 1993 ports. Having traveled less than a mile, the world’s
touted as the first personal digital assistant with latest weapon of mass destruction turned turtle and
handwriting recognition. Though the unreliable sank. A scale model of the Vasa was on view at the
Newton went belly up almost immediately, it’s now Museum of Failure’s first home in the Swedish port
regarded as the great-great-granddad of the iPhone. city of Helsingborg.
West notes that in Silicon Valley, failure is often West, for his part, would direct visitors to a tiny
viewed as “heroic and instructive.” Indeed, Dave “confession booth” and ask them to jot down their
McClure, co-founder of the 500 Startups incubator greatest failures on index cards, which were then
for tech ventures, once said that he seriously consid- posted on a wall. One card read: “I crashed my car
ered naming the company Fail Factory: “We’re here driving to the Museum of Failure.” West’s own big-
Green ketchup,
trying to ‘manufacture fail’ on a regular basis, and we introduced as gest flub? “When I bought the internet domain name,
think that’s how you learn.” (In June, McClure re- a tie-in with I accidentally misspelled ‘museum.’”
the 2001 movie
signed as CEO for engaging in what the organization Shrek, never High overhead and difficulty finding a perma-
termed “inappropriate interactions with women in really caught on. nent space caused him to close shop in Helsingborg
the tech community”—a self-manufactured fail if in September. Fortunately, the city stepped in and
there ever was one.) offered the museum a home in its cultural center.
The British entrepreneur Richard Branson, whose The April reopening will include exhibits that high-
empire has included hotels, airlines and the world’s light failed social and nonprofit innovations. West
first commercial spaceline, recently tweeted a line savors the irony of the exhibition’s initial stumble.
about failing from Samuel Beckett’s prose piece “I should put the Museum of Failure on display at
Worstward Ho: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try its own museum.”
again. Fail again. Fail Better.” Ironically, the phrase
was intended not as a motivational motto but an ex-
hortation to keep failing until you fail completely—or
die trying. A few lines later, Beckett added: “Fail again.
Better again. Or better worse. Fail worse again. Still Or i g i n s
worse again. Till sick for good. Throw up for good.”
Silicon Valley venture capitalist Geoff Lewis is
equally skeptical of celebrating real failures. Mindful The Clear
of all the employees who have been laid off or rele-
gated to dead-end assignments due to executive prod-
Alternative
uct bungling, Lewis says he’d “like to see the pendu-
TO COPE WITH a shortage of butchers in World
lum swing back a bit toward fear. Toward something War II, grocers created the self-service meat
one can rebound from, something to be neither embel- section, with its rows of precut chops and
lished nor marginalized, but rather something to be filets. Yet there was another invisible (and crin-
kly) force behind that change—cellophane,
mourned and then moved on from: plainly, a tragedy.” which profoundly colors how we shop today
West isn’t quite so gloomy. “The message I want to in ways that most consumers aren’t aware of.
convey is that it’s OK to share your unrefined ideas, A Swiss textile manufacturer invented
cellophane in 1908; the word is from “cellu-
your stupid questions, your failures without then lose” and “diaphane,” meaning transparent.
being negatively judged.” Chemists improved the product, which was
It’s fitting that his museum was launched in Swe- eventually controlled by DuPont, making it
both moisture-proof and permeable to air.
den, birthplace of the Vasa, perhaps the most epic That was a boon to the brightly lit modern
technological fail of the 17th century. The hull of supermarkets, because even chilled red meat
TH E A DVERTISI NG AR CHIVE S / A LAMY

kept in airtight packaging turns brown, an


the lavishly appointed frigate was 226 feet long, 398 initially harmless biochemical reaction that
feet wide and rose to 63 feet high at the stern. Those shoppers mistake for spoilage. In contrast,
specifications contained a fatal design flaw: The up- cellophane permits oxygen to react with meat, maintaining its crimson
hue for days. (Hint: Myoglobin protein in muscle transports oxygen.) “Cello-
perworks of the hull were too tall and heavily built phane changed our idea of what natural looks like,” says Ai Hisano, a Kyoto
for the relatively small amount of hull below the wa- University business historian who is unwrapping the story in a forthcoming
terline. The ship’s five decks were designed to carry a book, Visualizing Taste: How Business Created the Look of American Food.
There’s still some truth to the marketing zeitgeist summed up in the
complement of 133 seamen and 300 soldiers; among Progressive Grocer in 1937: “She buys meat with her eyes.” But things are
its 64 cannons were 48 massive bronze 24-pounders. changing. Internet-based food shopping is projected to gobble 20 percent
of the traditional market by 2025. Online, visual packaging is reportedly
All of which made the vessel dangerously unsteady. less important than information. Eyesight is so last century. In the future
Just minutes into the Vasa’s maiden voyage the wind she’ll buy meat with her mind. —ABIGAIL TUCKER

24 SMITHSONIAN.COM | December 2017

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