I don't think it does, though. "Innovation" isn't solely a function of the number of failed attempts, despite the fact that this particular way of looking at it

I don't think it does, though. "Innovation" isn't solely a function of the number of failed attempts, despite the fact that this particular way of looking at it has become trendy of late. Take a look at that last link, and specifically at how I unpack the lightbulb analogy that you used above and that's so popular with the "fast failure" set: https://collectiveidea.com/blog/archives/2015/09/24/the-right-way-to-think-about-whatsapps-massive-engineering-team https://collectiveidea.com/blog/archives/2015/09/24/the-righ... "Yeah, I know, I’m a jerk, because a startup is the hardest and most punishing thing you can do, and it’s considered rude to suggest that anyone’s success at it is largely attributable to luck and not “innovation”. And I’m sure you’re also thinking of Thomas Edison, and how he famously tried 1,000 different filaments before inventing the light bulb and then boom, innovation! Isn’t Airbnb just like that? No, it isn’t, because that story is bunk. As Thomas Parke Hughes describes in his magisterial Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930, Edison and his team at Menlo Park built an entire, low-cost electrical distribution network, of which the light bulb was one of a number of critical new components. It wasn’t like the electrical grid was just sitting there with empty sockets, waiting for Edison to diddle his way through the solution space until he stumbled into just the right filament so that he could staff up and scale; he had to invent, finance, manufacture, and deploy the entire grid in order to take on the entrenched gaslight industry."