What Can We Learn from Viagra

It was the year 1989. The scientists at Pfizer started to develop a breakthrough medicine for the high blood pressure and chest pain. It was supposed to cure chest pain associated with coronary heart disease. Eventually, the magic substance was created—Sildenafil.

You read that right. Sildenafil was supposed to decrease pressure, not put your heart into overdrive.

Unfortunately, the data from the trials wasn’t as expected. Put it simply, it didn’t work well.

After years of tests and experiments, hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on creating that great medicine. The cure for the human heart.

In June 1993, after four years of struggle, David Brown—Pfizer Chemist—was given an ultimatum from the clinical development committee:

Come back in September. If you don’t have good data by then, we are closing the project.

Dave Brown also recalls:

It was so close to failure that people weren’t coming to the meetings. I mean, you know how people sort of smell failure and disappear? It was that close.

How did a failure of this proportion turn into a stigma-cutting wonder drug that changed social views and beliefs about sex in general?

Generating billions in revenue while doing so, Viagra became the drug superstar of the 90s. Publicity and attention it was getting were just overwhelming. Beyond any control usual for pharmaceutical companies. People couldn’t get enough of it.

What happened?

Scientist discovered one of the side effects. This side effect is well known by now. So known it became common knowledge. You all know what I’m talking about.

The most important moment was changing the whole narrative of the drug. Scientists managed to get out of their routine and their hard-coded goals to create unprecedented success. This success came out of their biggest failure.

What can we learn from this part of modern history?

In life, most things won’t end up as we sketched them to be on our mental blackboards.

That is just how things are.

If we keep pushing the same agenda that shows little to no results, we can only end up creating a spiral of misery and strung losses.

When all things go south, we have a unique opportunity to escape our hardcoded perspective. That shock and hardship opens our eyes to new possibilities if we let it.

Learn every possible angle. Try to get out of the box. Experiment. Diversify your possibilities.

The first idea didn’t go well. Don’t repeat the same process. Spice things up.

Change. Adapt. Overcome.

Own your reality!