Passage 1
Failure: We all avoid it, andmost of us fear it. However, without failure, progress would be impossible.Indeed, the word success comes from the Latin succedere, meaning"to comeafter." And what does success usually come after? Failure. It seems thatone cannot exist without the other.
Every failure—even the worst ones—helps us learn to do things differently in the future "Ilearned how not to climb the first four times I tried to summitEverest,"says mountaineer Pete Athans, who has now reached the world'shighest peak seven times. "Failure gives you a chance to refine yourapproach. You're taking risks more and more intelligently."In Athans'case, his setback taught him that it was important to choose a less challengingroute for his first climb up Everest. Learning from past mistakes and makingchanges helped him to reach the top successfully.
Failure also reminds us thatthings can go wrong—sometimes with disastrous results. Austrian Gerlinde Kaltenbrunneris the first woman to summit all 14 of the world's 8,000-meter peaks withoutextra oxygen. In 2007, while climbing in Nepal, she was in an avalanche.Luckily, she survived, but two Spanish climbers died. The experience taughtKaltenbrunner that no matter how prepared a person is, bad things can still happen.Theevents of that day troubled her deeply, but in time, Kaltenbrunner decided shehad to learn from the experience and move on. "I realized that couldn'tmake the tragedy unhappen, "she says, "and I couldn't stop climbing—this is my life."
Accepting failure is not easyfor many, though. We are often reluctant to admit failure because ourprofessional reputations depend on success. However, things are slowlychanging, notably in the fields of business and science In the past decade, forinstance, some scientific journals—mostly in medicine and conservation—havereports of failed experiments. The belief is that the science community canalso learn from "negative"results and that this can eventually leadto positive outcomes.
In many ways, the business worldalready understands the value of negative results. To encourageentrepreneurship, the Netherlands-bas ABN AMRO bank started an Institute ofBrilliant Failures to learn more about what works and what doesn't in banking.Similarly, Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical corporation, has "R&D outcomecelebrations"—failure parties—to study data about drugsthat don't work. (Almost 90 percent of all drug trials fail, and the drugscannot be sold.)
In fact, one of the businessworld's most famous failures eventually became one of its biggest successes. Inthe early 1990s, Apple Corporation created a handheld device called the AppleNewton. The product, though unique at the time, was expensive and heavy;moreover, some of its most important features didn't work properly.Consequently, it became one of Apple's biggest failures, and in 1998, thecompany stopped selling it. However, Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs, believed theproduct had potential and he began to explore ways of improving it. In time,this led to the creation of the iPhone and the iPad, two of the company's mostsuccessful products.
The story of the Apple Newtoncan teach another important lesson about failure. Not only should we try tolearn from it; if we want to succeed, we must also be persistent. Though Applestopped selling the Newton in 1998, the first iPhone wasn't available until2007. It took a lot of research and hard work to go from the Apple Newton toiPhone, but in the end, the effort paid off.
Ultimately, there is lot wecan learn by studying mistakes. Perhaps the most important lesson is thatfailure and success are two sides of the same coin. One truly cannot existwithout the other.
What message do ABN AMRO bank and Eli Lilly try to convey?
A、Negative outcomes have their own value.
B、Business reputation is dependent on success.
C、The challenge for success is greater than ever.
D、The business world has little tolerance for failures
【正确答案】：A