It is OK to fail as long as the ship doesn't sink ...
Failed attempts to accomplish should never be punished (unless, of course, the attempted accomplishment is a criminal activity).
Edison's (team's) persistence when trying to invent an incandescent light bulb is legendary [many people don't realize Edison understood very little about electricity, chemistry, science, and math -- but he hired talent that did].
It's also interesting how hard it was for Edison to get over the unsuitability of DC for electricity transmission over distances longer than a few hundred feet. It may be that the brute force approach reinforced Edison's inflexibility when seeking alternative problem solutions. I get the impression Edison unnecessarily wasted resources in many of his endeavors.
I also find it interesting that Tesla didn't give up easily either (and failed plenty of times). It is possibly because he was punished for failures that he solved the seemingly impossible problem of long distance transmission by inventing AC (not Air Conditioning), the long wave radio, and he even invented a technically superior light bulb to Edison's.
I do think when reliance on marketing subverts technical superiority, let the markets beware. (That's probably a separate discussion)
