It has been done before, over and over again. Money spent, with no success, but not wasted. Time invested with no success, but not wasted. The most investment one can make these days seems to be

investing in failure. Entrepreneurs have been planning business ventures for as long as I have researched back into history. From the industrial revolution in Europe and America, entrepreneurship has failed to success.

A constant theme of success is risk, no matter if you are Oprah Winfrey, who was fired from her job and told she would not make it in television. A man in India who failed to become rich and failed to convince authorities of the need for the natural environment to be sustained, went on to plant a 1 360 acre forest of over a 30 year period – all by himself.

In order for a sprout to penetrate bark, it needs to find an opening numerous time before it will see light and grow. So it will fail to find an opening before receiving sunlight. If we add some perspective, risk should not be evaluated by the level of fear it generates or by the potential success. One must measure risk on the value of the goal.

I find value in the fact that Michael Jordan who is rated the greatest basketball player of all time, did not make his high school team. So he missed 9000, lost 300 games and this earned him the right, when despite a crowd of thousands and you could hear a pin drop when he was trusted on 26 occasions to take the game winning shots.

As the saying goes, “Work till you don’t have to introduce yourself.”

There are lessons to be learned from history as well. Where most of modern China is desert today, it was during 215 BC that the first Emperor, Qin Shi Huang, ordered the construction of the Great Wall of China.

The Great Wall of China is 8, 851.8 kilometres long and took long, strength draining hours of blood, sweat and life, to build. Yet, what stands today as a wonder to the world, a great symbol of achievement, and proof that human strength has no bound, failed to do what it was built for.

Taking a corporate perspective, find one executive who encourages ‘wild’ thinking’? The rigidity of the corporate sector and the resources sectors such as the oil industry in particular seem to have no room for the creative exploration of ideas that may translate into new paradigms for business units.

The toll of rigid education systems that for an average of twelve years in Africa, takes children through school with blinkers on. On average the school day in China is about 3-4 hours longer than in the USA, who in turn go to school for two years less than us here in Africa. Something is amiss!

Take the majority of the Africa population today. They are poor, resilient, and tenacious and people who survive. Their ‘Lot’ is not considered towards success. The fact that there are billions unbanked each year in Africa, by a segment of the population that have revolutionised the “Art of Survival”.

More than 50 percent of Africa’s GDP is secured in the informal sector which contributes most to the segment of unbanked in Africa. Reality proves Africa’s growth could come from increased revenues that will be taxed and not syphoned off the continent.

All types of failure breeds success. The failure in business and the failure to look after Africa’s poor have created the most resilient population on the planet.

Potentially with over 2 billion people on the continent and more than 300 million people unemployed in Sub-Saharan Africa alone, Africa hold the greatest pool of failures for success.