Western Standard - EXCLUSIVE： Dr Samuel West explains more about the Museum of Failure

00:00:00.320 so i i guess i should start and i'll let you go more but you know i mean a museum of failure i

00:00:04.320 mean what you're doing you're not celebrating failure you're documenting it i guess so we're

00:00:08.960 learning from it uh well i mean we have to differentiate failure so there's bad failure

00:00:14.480 and good failure the bad failure is in because of incompetence because of insubordinates it's

00:00:21.120 because of people not following in instructions so those are the failures that should not be

00:00:27.200 celebrated not accepted the type of failures that we celebrated the museum the failure is failure

00:00:33.200 when it's done in the name of progress so when you're pushing the boundaries of the envelope

00:00:38.320 testing a new way of doing things uh testing out new technology a new idea that's when you fail and

00:00:45.520 that's the type of failure we should be celebrating yeah well it's like a toddler for example is gonna

00:00:50.240 have to fall down dozens and dozens of times before they learn how to walk absolutely absolutely they

00:00:56.320 learn with each but you you point out some very interesting ones uh and and i'm a of a vintage

00:01:01.920 i remember some of them i mean the new coke for example comes to mind people who lived through the

00:01:07.040 80s remember so much uh celebration of it i guess you could say in promotion and you would think this

00:01:13.440 is what the coca-cola was one of the largest corporations on earth at the time you got to have

00:01:17.600 some of the best and brightest marketing minds out there and they put out a product that was just a

00:01:22.080 complete flop like yeah with what they it was in the early 80s the uh pepsi was the underdog and

00:01:31.120 pepsi had this brilliant marketing uh uh strategy where they would ask people to take it it's called

00:01:38.000 take the pepsi challenge and they would give people little plastic mugs with coca-cola and pepsi

00:01:43.600 and ask them to taste it blindly people would taste and go oh i like this one better voila it was pepsi

00:01:50.080 now coca-cola was a bit worried about that that consumers like pepsi better so they did their own

00:01:55.920 research uh and found out that people actually like pepsi better than coke and so they changed as the

00:02:03.120 story goes they changed this the original secret iconic recipe of coca-cola to make it slightly sweeter

00:02:11.840 which is what pepsi is and they called that new coke and it flopped completely because people hated

00:02:19.440 it they hated that that coca-cola would change their beloved recipe or their beloved coca-cola

00:02:27.840 um it was a total fiasco for coca-cola in the short term but because people were so worried about

00:02:34.000 their favorite classic coke disappearing they hamstered the coke so coke actually sold more

00:02:41.040 than they did otherwise so it was it's kind of one of those weird failures that was somewhat

00:02:46.560 economically successful well yeah i do remember the next thing they came out with

00:02:51.440 rather quickly was coke classic here it is the classic you can come back to it but exactly that's

00:02:56.320 why if you look if you if you look in a can of coke today you'll see that it says coca-cola classic

00:03:02.880 that's because of new coke yeah and they really pulled in i guess they're real brand loyalists so the

00:03:08.560 people who truly did love their coke i mean they were really sticking to it after that but it was an

00:03:12.160 inadvertent victory i guess absolutely the the executives of coca-cola said afterwards quoted

00:03:18.560 saying because of the success of the relaunch of coca-cola classic uh they said so they were asked

00:03:25.360 uh so did you do was all this uh did you do on purpose like is it an elaborate you know a ploy to

00:03:31.840 uh marketing ploy and then the cook executives said we're not that smart at least they're being honest

00:03:38.720 there and i know that that one came up uh kind of recently in pop culture my daughter watched that

00:03:44.000 stranger things series it's set in the 80s and they they referenced that and she was asking me about

00:03:48.240 like what the heck happened what was this new coke thing about and i had to explain it to her because

00:03:52.160 it was prior to her time absolutely i mean so that's an example of a product from like a food product

00:03:59.280 there's a lot of technology products uh google glass they had wearables that totally failed

00:04:05.280 so products from apple we got some weird stuff uh i just uh one of the one of the favorite uh items

00:04:14.800 is a face mask it's a it's a plastic face mask you put on your face and it gives your face electric

00:04:20.880 shocks and the spokesperson for this uh product is what was no other than linda evans from the hit show

00:04:28.400 dynasty so it looks like something from a horror film oh there you've got it all kinds of the the the

00:04:37.440 tech failures i've tried in the collection to not only have tech stuff but to have you know medical

00:04:44.880 failures we have cars we have a delorean ford edsel um obviously a lot of tech stuff because that's

00:04:53.040 where most of the innovation is happening um the the edsel's going back quite a ways but that that

00:04:59.120 was named after ford's son i believe yeah um the attribute but it turned out in the worst possible

00:05:05.840 way yeah do you know why it failed i don't yeah that i mean there's multi it's a it's it was a huge

00:05:12.400 failure it was like one of the biggest failures in american industry at the time um so ford

00:05:18.800 they reluctantly innovated because he ford wasn't much for innovation they can take any color they

00:05:24.320 like as long as they take black that's the the ford standardization yeah uh so uh the ford edsel was

00:05:31.920 a huge undertaking for uh for ford and they there was a lot of innovation they changed you could uh uh

00:05:40.160 you to change gears you would press buttons in the steering wheel for example

00:05:45.040 um the the design was uh revolutionary and different but keep keep that image on the screen

00:05:51.440 there because what ultimately killed it was that they took the grill and they turned it vertical

00:05:58.400 rather than their normal horizontal and remember this was in the 50s in the united states uh people

00:06:07.520 commented that they thought that the grill looked like female genitalia

00:06:11.360 and and uh in no way would they drive by a car like that so something so innocent or like you

00:06:20.880 you could never anticipate this uh turned it into a flop it wasn't the only reason it popped but that

00:06:26.960 was one of the reasons that's certainly what i hadn't heard of but i mean i guess particularly the

00:06:31.920 50s the age of the the muscle cars with the flames going down that some might be feeling it's a

00:06:37.120 uh a phallic substitute then i guess you don't want to see anything that implies anything otherwise

00:06:43.040 it's funny i i think it's a funny it's a it's a it's a it's a humorous reason for a multi-million

00:06:49.200 dollar failure and i imagine the lot was learned from that i mean other car companies were clearly

00:06:55.360 watching this very closely i mean it's a very competitive market and learn not to at least repeat

00:07:00.800 that mistake but you mentioned the delorean though that was tied to a bunch of you know cocaine

00:07:05.440 trafficking scandals with john delorean oh you know about the cocaine trapped scandals that was his

00:07:11.360 eccentric personality yeah yeah so uh but that was a different automotive failure but the delorean um

00:07:19.920 i mean the main reason it failed is because it was a crappy car um but if you look if you look at a

00:07:26.320 little bit more in detail uh the the the cars were manufactured in northern ireland ireland

00:07:33.440 in a ship at a shipyard like the the workers at the factory had never built a car so because of tax

00:07:40.640 subsidies and other other reasons incentives they decided to build the delorean there and i mean

00:07:46.640 without with zero experience in the car building industry there was no way that they could create

00:07:52.320 quality cars in that factory that was one of the major reasons the delorean failed otherwise the car looks

00:07:58.080 awesome i mean it's super cool it's it stood out with that uh you know sort of unpainted uh stainless

00:08:04.400 yeah and the gulf wing doors that you open like yeah it's pretty cool but i mean so i mean some of

00:08:10.320 those you can see where they tried and they have things but i mean as you said others are sort of

00:08:14.160 those what were you possibly thinking like you know it just seems a layperson could even look and say

00:08:19.360 how did you think that might work yeah that's yeah look at it and say that's never ever ever gonna work

00:08:24.000 we have one called the juicero um the juicero is it was from 2016 17 uh it was it's a juice press and

00:08:34.480 it's this massive 700 us dollars uh a juice press that's connected to the internet of course as all

00:08:41.920 juicers should be right um and they silicon valley loved it because it was such a cool device and you

00:08:50.640 subscribe to a bags of chopped fruit and so you would these chopped fruit bags would come home and

00:08:57.360 then you would put them in the in the this fantastically over designed uh a juicer and it

00:09:03.040 would press out the juice yeah there you go there it is would press the juice out with a huge amount of

00:09:08.880 force to get out all the minerals and all the vitamins and flavors well silica valley went crazy

00:09:15.840 and then they sold quite a bit of them actually at 700 bucks plus each eight to nine bucks a bag

00:09:24.720 anyway in 2018 17 18 there bloomberg news relaunch released a video on youtube where somebody just takes

00:09:35.120 the bag and squeezes it with their hand and out comes an entire glass of juice it destroyed the

00:09:43.520 company almost overnight i mean why do you need this expensive over design thing when you can just

00:09:48.400 squeeze it with your hand um and for me it's a reminder and it's a super it's a fantastic example

00:09:55.840 of silicon valley's ability to create elegant sophisticated expensive solutions to problems that do not exist

00:10:05.120 yeah well and just one more to hit on those before i talk maybe a little more about your museum itself

00:10:08.960 and the concept though and getting a bit more contemporary though was google glass like i i

00:10:12.960 kind of remember when they were announcing it was coming out i thought this sounds kind of interesting

00:10:16.480 this could be cool and it's google i mean boy they got some big minds and money behind it but that one

00:10:21.600 again was another catastrophe yeah i think it was at 2012-13 i was also excited about i i remember

00:10:28.240 thinking i'd do anything to get my hands on a google glass but they were quite expensive and you had to be

00:10:34.000 especially selected to be whatever early early uh uh consumer uh of that the problem with google

00:10:42.160 glass was there was there was a lot of problems but one of the main problems was that it was absolutely

00:10:47.040 useless there was no there was no use for this awesome technology it was the first real wearable with

00:10:54.800 a screen built into the glasses voice commands um recording uh it was awesome but when you don't have

00:11:03.680 any utility you couldn't do anything with it so it kind of fell it failed on that note most importantly

00:11:10.960 uh it failed because google didn't appreciate the privacy issues so i mean they're basically

00:11:17.040 they're basically a spy device connected to the to internet and people i mean it looks awesome and the

00:11:25.360 technology is awesome but google totally underestimated how people would react to the privacy issues and in

00:11:31.680 fact there were signs outside of cafes in in san francisco it would say uh no dogs you know can enter

00:11:40.560 and then it also have no glass holes that's what people that use google glass were called glass holes

00:11:47.840 um not so cool google totally uh failed on this one yet ironically you know a few years later i mean

00:11:55.440 people realize that a person could be holding up their phone and recording or taking pictures at any time and

00:12:00.240 i think people have just learned to get more guarded with what they're doing exactly i don't know if

00:12:05.120 i don't know if the privacy issues would be as much of a problem today because today it's either apple

00:12:10.720 or google that owns all your data so you you don't really have a choice anymore but at the time in 2013

00:12:17.600 it was a real concern yeah so getting to to the museum itself like what inspired you to uh put this

00:12:24.960 together it must have taken quite some time to get this many exhibits and and things like that uh and

00:12:29.520 have it on the road like this i i started it in 2017 and it's based i was doing research in

00:12:36.560 organizational psychology on how companies can boost innovation and one of the biggest obstacles to

00:12:43.360 innovation is was and still is the fact that people are afraid of making a failing so both you know

00:12:50.880 individuals and even organizational teams are afraid of taking meaningful risks where they risk failure

00:12:57.920 so the museum was born out of that frustration of how can i communicate to to my clients and through

00:13:04.480 my research that it's really how important it is to take these meaningful risks and how inevitable

00:13:11.200 failure is if we want progress so the idea the idea for the museum of failure actually i i got it i stole

00:13:19.360 it from another museum well it's innovative yeah you steal stuff from others no it was i i was inspired

00:13:28.000 by a visit to the uh in southern the mediterranean uh country of croatia they have a museum called the

00:13:36.560 museum of broken relationships and uh i just thought that was such an awesome museum it's so crazy and

00:13:44.240 you know abstract and i thought if they can do that i can do a museum of failure well yeah and i mean

00:13:49.920 quirky museums can be fun too what we have here in alberta is the in a small town is the gopher museum

00:13:56.800 i love it and uh decided with a taxidermist bent they actually had hundreds of these gophers and people

00:14:03.600 created little outfits for them and so all right all right all right that that sounds like an awesome

00:14:08.640 museum it draws a lot of visitors to an otherwise kind of insignificant prairie yeah yeah i love it

00:14:16.240 i didn't even know that existed that's that's fantastic yeah so i mean yours also as you said

00:14:21.520 it has a bit of an educational component i mean failure doesn't have to be considered a negative

00:14:25.440 thing it's a step yeah hey gopher museum if you're watching this uh contact us we want to we want one of

00:14:32.400 your failed go taxidermy taxidermy gophers in our museum in calgary contact me if i mind it's the

00:14:40.560 torrington gopher museum i think it's just about an hour and a half out of town while you're out here

00:14:44.480 so sorry what was your question i was obsessed with the golfer movement oh i already forgot the

00:14:48.400 gopher museum is pretty easily distracted but i guess that i have to i have to i have to get this in

00:14:54.320 uh the aim of the museum is still to teach to help us understand and appreciate

00:15:00.480 why we have to accept failure because there there won't be any innovation there won't be any progress

00:15:05.280 in any aspect of of of of life business uh uh arts in any way if we don't accept the the risk of

00:15:14.240 failure uh when we experiment and explore so there's a it's a fun museum but there's a really serious

00:15:20.080 uh uh uh sort of red thread throughout the entire exhibition yeah i mean you want to avoid failure

00:15:27.200 that's always your goal but don't look at a failure as an end it could be just considered a

00:15:31.920 step towards something better exactly well great so i mean it's it's set up it's going to be itself

00:15:36.320 center is this a freestanding thing outside of it or is there space within the mall that you guys have

00:15:40.640 set up within oh why do you ask such difficult questions um it's connected to the mall and it is

00:15:47.040 accessible through the mall but it's i i haven't seen the the the venue yet but it's in the mall i'm

00:15:54.640 pretty sure you can get it through it uh through the mall great okay no good enough answer or it is

00:16:01.200 i mean people will find it and i'm certainly you'll find it yeah yeah there's big banner if you're there

00:16:06.160 you won't miss it yeah my viewers know where south center mall is or most of them you know it's on the

00:16:11.440 south side of calgary off mcleod trail there it's it's a a sizable facility so i mean i'm looking forward

00:16:17.600 to it i really will have to make a point of getting out there on a day and have it okay so i just want to

00:16:22.480 because i you know i don't want it to be too easy for you so when you visit i'm not gonna i'm not

00:16:28.800 going to tell you now but when you visit there are two specific canadian failures that we added just for

00:16:36.240 calgary uh so your job is to find those okay well yes i don't want spoilers we still got to have some

00:16:43.840 discovery there and you have you know a hundred and some out there we only cover a few i mean people

00:16:49.280 want to discover and enjoy them in person uh so and that's uh it's going to be running for i believe

00:16:55.680 a few weeks at least it's coming in on july 1st is it july 1st and it runs about two months oh two

00:17:03.600 months okay so i think so check check it out i i the the exact when it closes has not been confirmed yet

00:17:08.800 so yeah no no problem at all so uh so where can people find information uh on the museum and and your

00:17:14.240 your work then dr west yeah uh check out museumoffailure.com and for sp that's more about

00:17:20.880 the museum in general and there's some examples of the of the items on display and then for just

00:17:27.120 specifically for calgary uh you click on calgary and you get to the the ticket sales page with more

00:17:33.120 information about opening times and all that excellent well thanks for coming on to talk to us about

00:17:38.560 it dr west i was looking forward to it and you didn't disappoint so thank you so much checking

00:17:45.360 the museum out and i hope lots of other folks do as well thank you so much

Western Standard - June 23, 2022

EXCLUSIVE： Dr Samuel West explains more about the Museum of Failure

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