Akio Morita
Given that Japan’s staple food is rice, it makes sense that the first product Akio Morita should attempt to make would be a rice cooker. Unfortunately, faulty engineering meant that the cooker didn't cook rice as much as it burn it, which explains why the cooker (a collector’s item today) sold less than 100 units. Unperturbed, Morita and his partners became better engineers and eventually created a tape recorder that one day morphed into the Walkman, spawning a multi-billion dollar company. That would be Sony, by the way.
H.D. Sanders
Scratching your head? Well what if I tell you that you may know this man better as the Colonel? Still no idea? Sanders is the man who gave the world Kentucky Fried Chicken – KFC to its billions of fans – but when he set out to sell his chicken his famously secret recipe was rejected over a thousand finger lickin’ times (1,009 to be precise) before a restaurant finally accepted it. Still, you know what they say. He who clucks last, clucks richest.
Isaac Newton
The genius who turned the world on its head when an apple fell on his, Newton had an undeniable talent for maths but he wasn’t considered especially bright as a student and never did very well at school. When his mother was widowed, Newton was put in charge of running the family farm. He hated it so much that his uncle persuaded his mother to send him back to school, where the thought of being sent back to the farm (and a bit of school-yard bullying) finally motivated him enough to reach the top of his class.
Vincent Van Gogh
Our favourite failure of all, it took death (and the loss of one ear) to make Vincent a success. During his lifetime, the world’s most famous artist only sold one painting and that was to the sister of friend for the equivalent today of about 50 USD. Why do we love him? Because even though no one liked his work, Van Gogh kept on painting, sometimes going without food to be able to buy the paint. He completed over 800 known works which often sell for hundreds of millions of dollars today.
Winston Churchill
A Nobel Prize-winning two-time British Prime Minster with a penchant for long cigars and even longer (though admittedly stirringly patriotic) speeches, Winston Churchill had trouble pronouncing his S’s, struggled in school and failed his first year of secondary school. Throwing himself into politics after a relatively successful military career, Churchill lost every attempt at public office until he finally became Prime Minister at 62 which probably explains why he was once quoted as saying: "Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never, Never, Never, Never give up."
