How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking

by Sönke Ahrens

Product developers make the same mistake on such a regular basis, one has to wonder if they do it on purpose. As marketing expert Robert McMath assembled the biggest-ever collection of supermarket products, he realised midway it was becoming almost exclusively a collection of failed products because they make up the vast majority of all products ever produced. He thought a museum would be a great place for product developers to see what already proved not to work so they didn’t have to repeat the same mistake. Alas, rarely does a product developer show any interest in learning from the experience of others. Often, companies don’t even keep track of their own failed attempts, providing McMath with whole series in which one kind of mistake was made in multiple variations, sometimes from each generation of developers in the same company (McMath and Forbes 1999).