Amazon Devices Chief Panos Panay Urges Embracing Failure to Drive Innovation

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Amazon's Panos Panay highlights failure as a crucial learning tool for entrepreneurs, drawing on his experience with Microsoft's Surface RT setback and stressing commitment to vision through adaptation.

Panos Panay, Amazon’s Senior Vice President of Devices, Alexa, and Leo, recently spoke at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco about the vital role failure plays in successful product development. Drawing from his extensive career, including over 19 years at Microsoft, Panay encouraged startup founders to not only accept failure but to actively seek it as evidence of pushing boundaries.

"You have to be willing to fail, and actually, not just willing, you actually have to go fail," Panay emphasized. He explained that failure is not an endpoint but an opportunity to harvest lessons and gain insights critical for future success.

Panay recounted a significant setback from his time at Microsoft: the launch of the Surface RT tablet. The product was a commercial failure that resulted in a nearly $1 billion write-down. Despite being labeled a failure publicly, Panay focused on the learnings drawn from the experience. He noted the failure was not a single event but the culmination of previous missteps, such as incomplete software, inventory mismanagement, and challenges with retail rollout.

Highlighting the importance of accountability, Panay urged founders to avoid excuses and to fully understand what went wrong. "It was easy to admit failure, but the trick was, and always is, did you harvest the learnings and understand what happened?" he said.

Importantly, Panay stressed that learning from failure should not lead to abandoning a product vision. He cited the Surface brand's subsequent success as evidence that maintaining conviction, even after setbacks, is essential. "You don’t let go of your vision. You don’t break it," he said.

Panay also advised adapting based on lessons learned rather than a complete overhaul, suggesting adjustments akin to shifting a trajectory by about 30 degrees. He believes that some founders remain stuck because they have not fully accepted their moment of failure, impeding progress.

Ultimately, Panay presented failure as a natural and necessary part of innovation, encouraging founders to embrace it as a driver of agility and improvement in their journey toward success.