The JFS thesis statement

1. Thousands more projects die than ever fail, because they're never completed to the point that they see the light of day, to succeed or fail on their own merits;
2. projects – and products – die in predictable ways, most very early in the creative process;
3. because human beings are the ones doing the creating, the act of creation is itself predictable and so are the failure points along it;
4. because the creation process is predictable, there are techniques, rules, and processes which can work for virtually every creative project;
5. if you can use knowledge of predictability to avoid or overcome the most common causes and places of project death, your project will likely live to see its launch,
6. and then, once launched, you will learn from it and can further refine it towards success

Avoid failure and you'll eventually build success.