[inanutshellus]

I think you nailed it.

The hook is "failure is how you succeed" but they show dead end products with perfunctory blurbs and facile presentations.

I'd've expected these, yes, but also more substantive "failed 'til I didn't" exhibits such as representations of the hundred+ prototypes that James Dyson purported to have made before finally figuring out the bagless vacuum.

Or... photos of Abraham Lincoln and a long, long, long list of his failed attempts to progress before finding himself in the presidency.

[Nomentatus]

Pardon my picking nits:

He wasn't entirely a failure; he was a very successful railway lawyer. As for his loss to Douglass, that may well have been strategic - a design from the beginning to force Douglas to endorse state sovereignty (not slavery everywhere.) That would get Douglas the senate win, but it was also pretty clear in advance that could split his party, the Democrats, in two. It did. That may have been a bigger strategic victory for his party than him personally getting into the White House.

[inanutshellus]

Thanks for the feedback.

Now we're entirely off-topic, but it's a six-day-old thread so I doubt it'll bother anyone. I hadn't heard about the idea of him intentionally losing. Reminds me of the famous quote about New Coke: "We aren't that smart, and we aren't that stupid." Contextually meaning - I wonder how intentionally he ran for an office, worked to become the party nominee, then somehow was able to intentionally not sway voters his way for that election but then... get picked as the nominee later so they could actually try to win.

Just speaking from intuition rather than knowledge, seems more like a "glass half full" kind of strategy. Either he wins, or he loses but his rival weakens the opposing party, opening up future opportunities.

Further, the "successful lawyer" thing doesn't detract from the issue. Again, it's about reaching further than one has already. Striving, struggling, faltering, finding purchase, gaining a foothold, and succeeding. The context of Lincoln not being financially dependent on the appointment is, contextually, irrelevant. It's just that person's baseline.

A similar (fictional) story could be "I was a successful school teacher but I took the bar 17 times and became a lawyer! I then went on to the supreme court and also went on to fund research on dyslexia and change the lives of thousands because of it."

Certainly being a school teacher is itself already success, and if they'd given up on the Bar exam that wouldn't mean falling back on academics mean there was no failure.