From Lemons to Lemonade: Squeeze Every Last Drop of Success Out of Your Mistakes

We all fail. And when it happens to you, someone's certain to point out that you can learn more from your failures than your successes. But learning from failure isn't automatic, or instantaneous. It requires very specific emotional and rational skills. You can learn those skills from this book. Drawing on leading-edge research with hundreds of entrepreneurs who have experienced both failure and success, From Lemons to Lemonade offers powerful strategies and practical techniques for managing the emotions generated by failure, so failure becomes less painful, learning happens faster, and you grow as much as possible from the experience. Dr. Dean Shepherd shows how to clarify why you failed, so you can walk away with insights you can actually use...helps you discover when to "pull the plug" on a failure in progress, so it won't last longer or feel even worse than necessary...shows how to eliminate secondary stresses that aggravate failure or make it more likely...helps you maintain your commitment to excellence even when you know that repeated project failure is likely...helps you master the self-compassion and self-caring you deserve in times of trouble. Let's face it: failing is never easy. But From Lemons to Lemonade will help you make it less painful and more useful and help you move from failure to success far more rapidly.

Dean A. Shepherd, Ph.D. is the Randall L. Tobias Chair in Entrepreneurial Leadership and Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. His research focuses on the decision-making and cognition required to leverage entrepreneurial opportunities and learn from experimentation and failure. Shepherd has authored or edited eight books on entrepreneurship and strategy. He coauthored Entrepreneurship, a leading textbook now in its seventh edition. He is Associate Editor for the Journal of Business Venturing, a reviewer for several journals, and a panelist for the National Science Foundation in the areas of Innovation and Organization Science.