"When God closes a door, he opens a window"
There are a mulititude of stories of entrepreneurs bouncing back from failure. However, none are as literal as Norman Stingley. Norman was a chemist for a rubber company that made "blow out preventors" for oil wells. He discovered a material and process that failed miserably in its applications on the wells, but had some unique characteristics. When compressed, it stored and released a significant portion of the original energy. After some creative thinking, he shaped the material into a ball and pitched it to Wham-O, the maker of Frisbee and Hula Hoops. It was introduced several months later in 1965 as the Super Ball that our children love to bounce around today…