Amazon devices chief Panos Panay on the importance of failure and bouncing back from it
Amazon devices chief Panos Panay on the importance of failure and bouncing back from it
亚马逊设备部门主管帕诺斯·帕奈（Panos Panay）对初创公司创始人传达了一个信息：失败是打造成功产品过程中不可避免且必要的一部分。作为亚马逊负责设备、Alexa 和 Leo 的高级副总裁，帕奈在旧金山举行的 TechCrunch Disrupt 大会上分享了这一建议，并回顾了他在微软工作 19 年多的经历，期间他曾经历过一次代价高昂的失败。“你必须愿意去失败，实际上，不仅仅是愿意，你必须去经历失败，”帕奈说道。“如果你从未失败过，那你可能从未挑战过极限。这实际上是关于如何从失败中汲取教训。你必须愿意面对它，并在面对的过程中从中学习。”
Panay said it’s possible to recover from all sorts of failures, even catastrophic ones, noting that he experienced one himself at Microsoft. He described the launch of the Surface RT, Microsoft’s first tablet computer, as a significant failure during his tenure at the company, one that ultimately led to a nearly $1 billion write-down. “I remember being on the front cover of a newspaper, and it just said failure,” Panay said. “But, here’s the thing, it was easy to admit failure. The trick was, and always is, did you harvest the learnings and understand what happened? All right. What did you learn? Because the failure wasn’t that moment. It was decisions that led up to it two years before that, whether the software wasn’t complete or the inventory was wrong or how we balanced into retail. There were all these steps along the way.”
帕奈表示，从各种失败中恢复过来是可能的，即使是灾难性的失败也不例外，他提到自己在微软时就经历过一次。他将微软首款平板电脑 Surface RT 的发布描述为他在该公司任职期间的一次重大失败，最终导致了近 10 亿美元的资产减记。“我记得当时登上了报纸头版，上面就写着‘失败’，”帕奈说。“但关键在于，承认失败很容易。诀窍在于，而且永远在于，你是否汲取了教训并理解了发生了什么？好吧，你学到了什么？因为失败并非发生在那一刻，而是源于两年前导致该结果的决策，无论是软件未完成、库存错误，还是我们在零售渠道的平衡方式。这一路走来有各种各样的步骤。”
He said founders need to be willing to understand what went wrong, and avoid making excuses, and ultimately accept the failure. “Here’s the other side of it,” he said. “You want to succeed, yeah? You take that failure, but you don’t let go of your vision. That’s it. Surface has done pretty well. You don’t let go of your vision. You don’t break it.”
他说，创始人需要愿意去理解哪里出了问题，避免找借口，并最终接受失败。“事情还有另一面，”他说。“你想成功，对吧？你接受了失败，但你不能放弃你的愿景。就是这样。Surface 后来做得相当不错。你不能放弃你的愿景。你不能打破它。”
Panay emphasized the importance of staying committed to a vision, learning from experience, and moving quickly. He believes that by embracing failure and learning from setbacks, founders can adapt and make progress faster, even as they encounter new obstacles. “It goes back to the same fundamental, like, have you learned?” he said. “Were you learning along the way? Because if you were learning, then you just change your vector. Usually, it’s not 180 degrees. Usually, it’s just 30 degrees. Take your lessons learned, change a little bit, adapt your vision where it needs to be, and then go. I believe there’s people that hang on too long, but it’s because they haven’t accepted the moment of failure at all.”
帕奈强调了坚持愿景、从经验中学习以及快速行动的重要性。他认为，通过拥抱失败并从挫折中学习，创始人可以更快地适应并取得进展，即使在遇到新障碍时也是如此。“这又回到了同一个基本点，比如，你学到了吗？”他说。“你在过程中学习了吗？因为如果你在学习，那么你只需要改变你的方向。通常不是 180 度的大转弯，通常只是 30 度的调整。吸取教训，做一点改变，在需要的地方调整你的愿景，然后继续前进。我相信有些人坚持得太久了，那是因为他们根本没有接受失败的那一刻。”