I often hear the phrase “celebrate failure.” That phrase and more fundamentally the idea(concept?) has always bothered me. I believe it lacks the nuance and detail to be useful. Many quotes and phrases are often ripe for misinterpretation.
Failure in of itself can be bad or good. Failure in terms of the context that it was defined is inherently bad, however it can be useful in a larger context. This is where the phrase celebrate failure is useful. Since the failure is part of an overall strategy of success. What I would describe as meta success.
Failure can also simply be a failure if it is not part of a larger context/strategy, or if the failure is part of an overall failing strategy. What I would call a meta failure. This most classic example of this is simply doing the same thing, continuously failing, and not learning. More interesting examples of this are where you have a combination of a short-term success and a long-term failure. A common example of this is the gambler that wins a large payout and continues to gamble; eventually losing more. This large payout was a success however, the strategy of gambling with probability working against the gambler is an example of meta failure.