In the 1950s the Jacuzzi brothers invented a whirlpool bath to treat people with arthritis. Although the product worked, it didn't sell well. Too few people in the target market, sufferers from arthritis, could afford the expensive bath.

The Jacuzzi brothers treated that failure as a feedback, learned from it, and re-launched the same product for a different market – as a luxury item for the wealthy. It became a big success. 

"At Dell, innovation is all about taking risks and learning from failure," says Michael Dell, the Founder & CEO of Dell Inc. "Today, we're well known for inventory management, logistics, supply chain management, and such, but that wasn't always the case. Back in 1989, we had a very large disaster – large, at least, for the small company we were at the time. The personal computer industry was making the transition to a new type of memory chip, and we found ourselves stuck with far too many of the old kind.

That was a costly mistake, and it took us about a year to recover, but we learned from it. The failure led us to develop a new way to manage inventory, and we went from being last place in the minor leagues to where we now win the World Series every year."