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Revision as of 14:37, 29 May 2008 by 152.86.133.139 (talk) (→Criteria for failure)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)For other uses, see Failure (disambiguation).
Failure (fail, phail or flop) in general refers to the state or condition of not meeting a desirable or intended objective. It may be viewed as the opposite of success. Product failure ranges from failure to sell the product to fracture of the product, in the worst cases leading to personal injury, the province of forensic engineering.
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Types of failure
Failure can be differentially perceived from the viewpoints of the evaluators. A person who is only interested in the final outcome of an activity would consider it to be an Outcome Failure if the core issue has not been resolved or a core need is not met. A failure can also be a process failure whereby although the activity is completed successfully, a person may still feel dissatisfied if the underlying process is perceived to be below expected standard or benchmark.
- Failure to anticipate
- Failure to perceive
Commercial failures
A commercial failure is a product that does not reach expectations of success, failing to come even close. A major flop goes one step further and is recognized for its complete lack of success.
Most of the items listed below had high expectations, significant financial investments, and/or widespread publicity, but fell far short of success. Due to the subjective nature of "success" and "meeting expectations", there can be disagreement about what constitutes a "major flop."
- For flops in computer and video gaming, see List of commercial failures in computer and video gaming
- For company failures related to the 1997–2001 Dot-com bubble, see Dot-com company
- See also Vaporware
Fail internet meme
"Fail" is the name of a popular internet meme where users superimpose the word "fail" onto embarrassing or compromising photos. The G4 television channel has a web feature called "Epic Fail" that denotes major gaffs in popular culture - a mainstream play on the meme. Fail Dogs, an animal version, made the front page of Digg in February, 2008.
See also
- Cascading failure
- Debugging
- Failure analysis
- Failure rate
- Failure mode
- Forensic engineering
- List of military disasters
- Murphy's law
- New product development
- Non-event
- Power outage
- Product
- Product management
- Single point of failure
- Structural failure
- Tensile strength
- White elephant
- System accident
References
- Memes Help Keep Internet Interesting - Technology - redOrbit
- The Fail Blog
- FailDogs.com
- G4: The Feed
- Made Popular
- Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies, New Tork: Basic Books, 1983. Paperback reprint, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-691-00412-9
- Sandage, Scott A. Born Losers: A History of Failure in America. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-674-01510-X, ISBN 0-674-02107-X