I employ case studies of failure into my courses, emphasizing that they teach us much more than studies of success. It is not that success stories cannot serve as models of good design or as exemplars of creative engineering. They can do that, but they cannot teach us how close to failure they are.
Success Good Design

About This Quote

About Henry Petroski

Henry Petroski was a 20th-century American engineer and academic. Henry Petroski was an American engineer specializing in failure analysis. A professor both of civil engineering and history at Duke University, he was also a prolific author. Read more on Wikipedia →

Themes

  • Success — Insights on achievement, ambition, and reaching your goals

More quotes by Henry Petroski

“Failure is central to engineering. Every single calculation that an engineer makes is a failure calculation. Successful engineering is all about understanding how things break or fail.”
— Henry Petroski
Successful Engineering

“Engineering is achieving function while avoiding failure.”
— Henry Petroski
Achieving Engineering

“The paradox is that when we model future designs on past successes, we are inviting failure down the line; when we take into account past failures and anticipate potential new ways in which failure...”
— Henry Petroski
Future Past Successful

“Case studies of failure should be made a part of the vocabulary of every engineer so that he or she can recall or recite them when something in a new design or design process is suggestive of what ...”
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Design Study She

“Many of the familiar little things that we use every day have typically evolved over a period of time to a state of familiarity. They balance form and function, elegance and economy, success and fa...”
— Henry Petroski
Success Time Little Things

“I emphasize that virtually every engineering calculation is ultimately a failure calculation, because without a failure criterion against which to measure the calculated result, it is a meaningless...”
— Henry Petroski
Engineering Measure Number
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