The power of failure.

• Position: List - Brief article

Most people think of failure as something to be avoided. But in her book The Up Side of Down (Viking), Bloomberg View columnist Megan McArdie argues that it's actually a key to success. In May, she offered three reasons why it's OK to fail.

1 Failure is a great teacher. It's literally how we learn: We try something we think will work, and more often than not, we find out that it doesn't. Watch a baby learn to walk, a teenager learn to play tennis, or a speaker learn to deliver a great talk-- it's all the same process of trial and error, heavy on the error.

2 Failure is the engine of change. How does evolution turn an amoeba into an armadillo? Through random mutation and ruthless selection. How do markets create new products or industries? Creative destruction: Old firms and ideas die, which...