Past Events > February 2008
Success and Failure in Everyday Things - Turning Failure Into Success
Product development and design are about making and doing new things. To be successful, we must properly anticipate how things can fail, and design accordingly. Past failures thus provide invaluable
experience and inspiration for the design of future successes. These ideas will be explored through case studies of how some very simple everyday things have evolved over time.
Learn from acclaimed expert Henry Petroski in this event unique in bringing together members from the Product Development and Management Association and our event partners, the Industrial Designers
Society of America, and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
Henry Petroski is the Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering and a professor of History at Duke University. He has written broadly on the topics of design, success and failure, and the history of engineering and technology. His many books on these subjects include Success through Failure: The Paradox of Design, To Engineer Is Human, Design Paradigms, Engineers of Dreams, The Pencil, The Evolution of Useful Things, and Small Things Considered. His latest book is The Toothpick, a technical and cultural history of the toothpick. Petroski has written many general-interest articles and essays for magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, and he writes regular columns for both American Scientist and ASEE Prism. He lectures frequently to audiences in the U.S. and abroad, and has been interviewed often on radio and television. He has been profiled in the New York Times, Smithsonian, U.S. News and World Report, and many other newspapers and magazines. Before moving to Duke in 1980, Henry Petroski was on the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin and on the staff of Argonne National Laboratory. He is a registered professional engineer in Texas and a chartered engineer in Ireland. Among his many honors are membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the U.S. National Academy of Engineering
