Anticipate Failure

Quibi was going to put short, premium-quality videos in the hands of millions of content-hungry mobile consumers around the globe. The Apple Newton combined cool with indispensable in a way that was expected to spark a new mobile device market that was much bigger than the personal computing market. The $2,500 Tata Nano automobile was touted as a major gamechanger for India and the millions of aspiring middle-class customers who would surely buy one. The Segway personal transporter was introduced with fanfare as a marvel of technology that was poised to change urban transportation. Each one of these products was to set the world on fire—disrupting markets and changing our lives forever. Until they didn’t. In his groundbreaking book, Anticipate Failure, Lak Ananth—CEO of global venture capital firm Next47—describes the most common patterns of failure in innovation. He starts with the premise that building a business based on innovation is a perilous endeavor, and failures big and small