When companies fail at something, they often like to hide any evidence of the misstep. But a traveling exhibition is celebrating the products and services that didn’t succeed. The Museum of Failure—whose most recent stop was Washington, D.C.—spotlights more than 150 commercial ideas that didn’t pan out over recent decades, including Bic pens for women, a portable vinyl player, and a Hasbro alternative to Barbie called Little Miss No Name. The creators of the exhibit point out that these companies haven’t let a few failures hold them back; in fact, many are far better known for successes. They hope visitors will take that message to heart and feel inspired to take chances in their own lives. “You walk around in the museum, [and] you see the ‘big boys’: Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc.,” says curator and founder Samuel West. “You see that they failed when they tried something new, when they pushed their boundaries . . . There would be no progress without failure.”